Comparative analysis of blood-derived endothelial cells for designing next-generation personalized organ-on-chips

Organ-on-chip technology has accelerated in vitro preclinical research of the vascular system, and a key strength of this platform is its promise to impact personalized medicine by providing a primary human cell-culture environment where endothelial cells are directly biopsied from individual tissue or differentiated through stem cell biotechniques. But these methods are difficult to adopt in labs, and often result in impurity and heterogeneity of cells. This limits the power of organ-chips in making accurate physiological predictions. In this study, we report the use of blood-derived endothelial cells as alternatives to primary and iPSC-derived endothelial cells. Briefly, the genotype, phenotype and organ-chip functional characteristics of blood-derived outgrowth endothelial cells were compared against commercially available and most used primary endothelial cells and iPSC-derived endothelial cells. Through RNA sequencing we observe differences in gene expression profiles between different sources of endothelial cells, however blood-derived cells are relatively closer to primary cells than iPSC-derived suggesting that blood-derived endothelial cells may serve as an equally effective cell source for functional studies and organ-chips compared to primary cells or iPSC-derived cells. Overall design: Study differences in transcriptional profiles of human umbilical vein endothelial cells, iPSC-derived endothelial cells and blood derived outgrowth endothelial cells