BCL-xL/BCL2L1 is a critical anti-apoptotic protein that suppresses BAK to promote pancreatic specification from human pluripotent stem cells

Purpose: From qPCR and western blot analyses, we observed that BCL-xL was upregulated from D7 onwards during differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells towards pancreatic progenitors using a combination of growth factors Method: On D7, we treated the cells with WEHI-539 (BCL-XL inhibitor) to understand the effects of BCL-xL inhibition on the pancreatic progenitor fate. The goal of this project is to elucidate the role of BCL-XL in the generation of early pancreatic progenitors in terms of cell fate and metabolism.