Generation of mature lung alveolar epithelial cells from human pluripotent stem cells

We perform time-series global transcriptomic profiling of a directed differentiation protocol for generating alveolar epithelial type II cells (AEC2s) from pluripotent stem cells (PSCs). We analyzed 3 different timepoints in the RUES2 differentiation: 1) Day 0 undifferentiated cells, 2) Day 15 lung progenitors highly enriched in NKX2-1+ cells by CD47hi/CD26lo sorting, and 3) the outgrowth of these purified progenitors in 3D culture sorted again on Day 35 based on SFTPCtdTomato+ and SFTPCtdTomato- gating. For comparison to primary cells, we simultaneously sequenced RNA from purified primary fetal (21 week gestation) distal alveolar epithelial progenitors and purified adult human (HTII-280 sorted) AEC2s. In order to evaluate the effect of cell culture on primary fetal alveolar cells, parallel aliquots of the fetal cells were also exposed to 4 days of culture in DCI media. We find that AEC2 maturation involves downregulation of Wnt signaling activity, and that the highest differentially expressed transcripts in iPSC-derived AEC2s encode genes associated with lamellar body and surfactant biogenesis. Analysis of global transcriptomes of PSCs and their differentiated progeny (primordial lung progenitors and alveolar cells) compared to primary fetal (21 week) and adult alveolar epithelial type 2 cells in triplicate. Nine of the samples were re-analyzed from a previously publish study by Jacob et al. 2017 Cell Stem Cell (accession: GSE96642)