Retinoic acid and FGF10 promote the differentiation of mESCs into induced embryonic salivary glands

Salivary glands produce saliva and play essential roles in digestion and oral health. Pluripotent stem cell-derived (PSC) organoids provide a powerful platform for studying salivary gland development and developing new regenerative therapy. The previous protocol of PSC-derived salivary gland organoids required complicated manufacturing processes, which hampered the organoids for basic research and clinical application.Here, by mimicking the regulatory mechanism of developing salivary glands, we reported the differentiation of induced embryonic salivary glands (iE-SGs) from mouse embryonic stem cells by step-wise treatment of retinoic acid and FGF10. We showed that the iE-SGs recapitulated early morphogenetic events, including the thickening and invagination of the salivary gland placode, and then formed initial buds. The iE-SGs also differentiated into developing ducts structures and could develop to striated and excretory ducts when transplanted in vivo. RNA- seq revealed that iE-SGs had gene expression profiles similar to mouse embryonic SMGs. Thus, our study provided an easy and safe method to generate iE-SGs and offered possibilities for studying events during salivary gland morphogenesis in vitro Analysis of global transcriptomes of mouse embryonic stem cell derived iE-SGs.There are two  replicates in each group.