The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) is seeking commercial partners interested in developing a method for differentiating human pluripotent stem cells to pericytes and smooth muscle cells.
OVERVIEW
Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), either embryonic or induced, provide access to the earliest stages of human development. They also offer a starting point for deriving large numbers of vasculogenic cells that could be utilized for therapeutic tissue engineering, e.g., creating new blood vessels to treat peripheral artery disease.
To exploit this potential, methods are needed for guiding pluripotent cell differentiation in vitro and developing scalable sources of such cells.
THE INVENTION
UW–Madison researchers have developed a method for generating substantially pure populations of vasculogenic cells (i.e., pericytes and smooth muscle cells) from induced pluripotent stem cells following their differentiation into mesenchymal colony-forming progenitors, called mesenchymoangioblasts (MABs). Read the full story here.
;
