Abstract
Hanging drop (HD) culture is used to induce differentiation of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) into other cell types including cardiomyocytes. However, the factors affecting cardiac differentiation of ESCs with this method remain incompletely understood. We have investigated the effects of the starting number of ESCs in embryoid bodies (EBs) and the time of EB adherence to gelatin-coated plates on cardiac differentiation: cardiac differentiation was increased in the EBs by a larger number of ESCs and was decreased by plating EBs at day 4 or earlier. These two factors can thus be optimized to enrich the cardiac differentiation in ESCs using the HD method.
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Acknowledgments
This study was supported by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China to Jingfeng Wang (No. 30971262), a grant from the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province to Shuanglun Xie (No. 9451008901002399), a grant from the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China to Shuang-lun Xie (No. 20090171120073) and a grant from Science and Technology Project of Dongguan city (No. 200910815255).
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Chen, M., Lin, YQ., Xie, SL. et al. Enrichment of cardiac differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells by optimizing the hanging drop method. Biotechnol Lett 33, 853–858 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-010-0494-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-010-0494-3