stem cell markers

With the similar properties with human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) both at molecular and functional levels, human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) are considered to be potential for drug screening, disease modeling, and regenerative medicine. Now, hiPSCs can be generated from different somatic cell types by overexpressing four transcription factors (OCT4, SOX2, KLF4, and MYC). However, there is a major limitation during reprogramming process that low efficiency in pluripotency induction leads to the generation of a few reprogrammed hiPSCs. Although the morphology analysis of iPSCs has been used for their isolation, some studies have shown that the isolated hiPSC clones have differences in the expression of pluripotency gene markers and those with the similar levels of pluripotency marker expression present different abilities in lineage differentiation. In this case, the analysis of pluripotency gene marker expression would be a potential strategy for the enrichment and isolation of iPSCs.

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