Efficacy of soft substrates for iPS cells establishment and culture

Research Project

Project/Area Number	25871141
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Research Field	Biomedical engineering/Biomaterial science and engineering Developmental biology
Research Institution	Tokyo Women's Medical University
Principal Investigator	HIGUCHI SAYAKA 東京女子医科大学, 医学部, 助教 (00618861)
Project Period (FY)	2013-04-01 – 2015-03-31
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 2014)
Budget Amount *help	¥4,290,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥990,000) Fiscal Year 2014: ¥1,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥300,000) Fiscal Year 2013: ¥2,990,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,300,000、Indirect Cost: ¥690,000)
Keywords	マウスiPS細胞培養 / ソフトマテリアル / フィーダーフリー / 高品質iPS細胞
Outline of Final Research Achievements	This decade, using feeder cells has been standard in the culture of iPS cells. However, the condition of feeder cells as an environmental factor directly gives the change to quality of iPS cells. Therefore, I tried to find the new effective-condition for the culture of mouse-iPS cells without feeder cells. The iPS cells, iPS-MEF-Ng-20D-17, were incubated on the soft substrates, and I found that the soft substrate was effective in the culture. The effect was enhanced by addition of two inhibitors, GSK3 inhibitor and MAP kinase inhibitor. Second, I tried to investigate the mechanism for maintaining of the iPS cells in this culture condition. In my current study by microarray analysis, the key molecules for maintaining of the iPS cells on the soft substrate, is becoming clearer. The culture condition without special substrate, such as feeder and soft substrate, is under developing based on the result of microarray analysis.