New Podcast Episode. PSC Developmental Bias: The Mechanism and the Variation in Human Neural Development

Pluripotent stem cells are defined, in part, by their potential to generate cell types from all three embryonic germ layers. However, it is well known within the field that there is variability in developmental potential between cell lines. This phenomenon, sometimes referred to as lineage bias, is manifest in a variable response of individual cell lines to induction of differentiation into a specific germ layer lineage. Although lineage bias in pluripotent stem cells has been reported for some years, we do not fully understand its molecular basis, or its implications for normal development.

The guests on this episode of The Stem Cell Report studied functional variation in human PSC lines as they progress through neurectoderm versus mesendoderm lineages and fore- versus hind-brain development. They will discuss the origin and consequences of inter-individual variation in the early events orchestrating human neural development, the extent to which such variation might impact on adult health and disease, and how it might be exploited in stem cell therapy. 

Guests

• Ron McKay is the Director of Basic Science at the Lieber Institute and has appointments in multiple departments and the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, USA. He currently serves as a member of the Stem Cell Reports Editorial Board. 

• Suel-Kee Kim is an Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Neuroscience at Yale University School of Medicine, USA. 

• Seungmae Seo is an Assistant Professor at University of Maryland Eastern Shore, USA. Seungmae is a former ISSCR Merit and Travel Award Winner.

Our guests and their colleagues authored the recently published paper, Individual variation in the emergence of anterior-to-posterior neural fates from human pluripotent stem cells, published in Stem Cell Reports.