Differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells into bone and adipose cell lineages

Human induced pluripotent cells (hiPSCs) could be established as promising new resources for obtaining differentiated cells for cell therapy. iPSCs have the potential to use as multipurpose research and clinical tools to understand model diseases, develop and screen candidate drugs, and deliver cell-replacement therapy to support regenerative medicine. Here, we demonstrated the ability of human iPSCs to differentiate into adipocyte and osteoblast fate.
In this experimental study, human iPSCs were culture-expanded. HiPSCs were then cultivated in the osteogenic and adipogenic conditions for 21 days after which differentiations were evaluated by specific staining as well as qRT-PCR analysis for related gene expression.
In osteoinductive cultures, the cells formed nodules which were positively stained red following alizarin red staining. In adipogenic cultures, the cells developed some lipid droplets which were positively stained red with oil red. According to qRT-PCR analysis, the bone-related genes including osteocalcin and osteopontin, and also the adipocyte-specific genes such as PPAR and LPL were expressed in the osteogenic and adipogenic cultures, respectively.
Taken together, hiPSCs are pluripotent cells with the ability to differentiate into osteocytic and adipocytic cell lineages.