Generation of Functional Tissues from Human Pluripotent Stem Cells

Functional and maintainable tissue-specific differentiated cells from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), including embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), are powerful tools for genetic disease modeling, pathogenic mechanism investigation, drug screening and regenerative medicine. In the last decade, many efforts have been devoted to differentiate hPSCs into tissue-specific cells. Though the differentiated cells express tissue-specific genes, these cells resemble fetal cells and are not fully mature. How to generate functional and mature cells from hPSCs and maintain their function stably is still a big challenge. In recent years, the newly 3D culture differentiation methods and single cell RNA seq (scRNA-seq) provide new insights to mimic in vivo development and microenvironment more accurately. Such advancements aid to generate functional and maintainable cells from hPSCs.

This Research Topic aims to cover work on recent and novel hPSCs differentiation that could be helpful to generate functional cells and also cover work on genetic disease modeling using hPSCs.

In this special issue, we welcome original research, review articles, methods, resources and perspectives, including but not limited to:
-Advanced technologies and strategies for hPSCs differentiation;
-Mechanisms of human cell and tissue development;
-Functional adult maturation of hPSC differentiated cells.;
-Maintenance and expansion of tissue-specific cell progenitors derived from hPSCs;
-Genetic disease modeling using hPSCs.