DIKUL - logo
E-resources
Peer reviewed Open access
  • Human pluripotent stem cell...
    Schwartz, Michael P.; Hou, Zhonggang; Propson, Nicholas E.; Zhang, Jue; Engstrom, Collin J.; Costa, Vitor Santos; Jiang, Peng; Nguyen, Bao Kim; Bolin, Jennifer M.; Daly, William; Wang, Yu; Stewart, Ron; Page, C. David; Murphy, William L.; Thomson, James A.

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, 10/2015, Volume: 112, Issue: 40
    Journal Article

    Human pluripotent stem cell-based in vitro models that reflect human physiology have the potential to reduce the number of drug failures in clinical trials and offer a cost-effective approach for assessing chemical safety. Here, human embryonic stem (ES) cell-derived neural progenitor cells, endothelial cells, mesenchymal stem cells, and microglia/macrophage precursors were combined on chemically defined polyethylene glycol hydrogels and cultured in serum-free medium to model cellular interactions within the developing brain. The precursors self-assembled into 3D neural constructs with diverse neuronal and glial populations, interconnected vascular networks, and ramified microglia. Replicate constructs were reproducible by RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) and expressed neurogenesis, vasculature development, and microglia genes. Linear support vector machines were used to construct a predictive model from RNA-Seq data for 240 neural constructs treated with 34 toxic and 26 nontoxic chemicals. The predictive model was evaluated using two standard hold-out testing methods: a nearly unbiased leave-one-out cross-validation for the 60 training compounds and an unbiased blinded trial using a single hold-out set of 10 additional chemicals. The linear support vector produced an estimate for future data of 0.91 in the cross-validation experiment and correctly classified 9 of 10 chemicals in the blinded trial.