S1P mediates key targets associated with survival, proliferation and pluripotency in human embryonic stem cells

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) replicate by the process of self-renewal, whilst maintaining their pluripotency. Understanding the pathways involved in the regulation of this self-renewal process will assist in developing fully-defined conditions for the proliferation of hESCS required for therapeutic applications. We previously demonstrated a role for Sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) in the survival and proliferation of hESCs. The present study investigates further key signalling pathways and the downstream targets of S1P. Microarrays were used to examine changes in gene expression invoked by treatment of human embryonic stem cells grown upon different matrices Keywords: Karyotypically normal human Esc's Human embryonic stem cells (Sheff 4) were grown upon MEFs. One group were treated with S1P. Each group consisted of three replicates which were hybridised to Human U133 plus 2 Affymetrix GeneChips