An Automated, High Platform for Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Derivation, Characterization and Differentiation

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have become an essential tool for both modeling how causal genetic variants impact cellular function in disease, as well as being an emerging source of tissue for transplantation medicine. Unfortunately the preparation of somatic cells, their reprogramming and the subsequent verification of iPSC pluripotency are laborious, manual processes that limit the scale and level of reproducibility of this technology. Here we describe a modular, robotic platform for iPSC reprogramming that enables automated, high-throughput conversion of skin biopsies into iPSCs and differentiated cells with minimal manual intervention. Using this platform, we demonstrate that automated reprogramming and the pooled selection of pluripotent cells results in high quality, stable, iPSCs. These lines display less line-to-line variation than either manually produced lines or lines produced through automation followed by single colony-subcloning. The robotic platform we describe will enable the application of iPSCs to population-scale biomedical problems including the study of complex genetic diseases and the development of personalized medicines. Two independent human fibroblast lines were reprogrammed, using modified mRNA, into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). The genomic stability of several cell lines was evaluated using SNP arrays. Three iPSCs originating from one fibroblast line were tested at passages 8 and 20, with two of these derived as picked (clonal) lines and the third being a pooled population. Five iPSCs originating from a second fibroblast line were tested at passages 8 and 20, with three of these derives derived as picked (clonal) lines and two derived as pooled populations. The iPSCs were compared against the original parental fibroblasts.