With the advent of human Pluripotent Stem Cell (hPSC) technologies, particularly human induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (hiPSCs), there is now a real possibility to engineer countless different types of replacement tissues/cells in a personalized manner, for regenerative medicine applications. However, for this to become reality we need to understand how human stem cells can be robustly and efficiently induced to take desired fates so that their products can be used clinically in a reliable and safe way.
In this talk I will describe how our group has recently been pioneering experimental and computational strategies to investigate quantitatively hPSC single-cell dynamics, in particular with the aims to clarify the role that cell biological features - like cell cycle progression, cell growth and size, cell migration or cell death – play in controlling overall hPSC proliferation in vitro, and how those features might in turn impact cell differentiation.
Our longer term goal is to clarify through this approach the mechanisms that give rise to efficiency, specificity and tumourigenic potential in hPSC differentiation, to optimize synthetic tissue design on a person by person basis.