Mesenchymal progenitors from hESCs & profiling vs. BMMSCs

New potential sources of stem cells for clinical application include bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMMSCs), human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). However, each source is not without its own concerns. While research continues in an effort overcome these problems, the generation of mesenchymal progenitors from existing hESC lines may circumvent many of these issues. We report here a comparison of the transcriptome of hESC-derived mesenchymal progenitors (EMPs), its parental hESC line, and 2 donors of adult BMMSCs. A custom-designed oligo-microarray of just over 11,000 highly-expressed genes in stem cells was used to profile the transcriptome of BMMSCs, EMPs, and hESCs.