Methods of culturing embryonic stem cells and controlled differentiation

Patent Number: 7,112,437

This patent covers ways of generating human neural stem cells, or committed stem cells, from embryonic stem cells. The patent has 2 independent claims.

The first teaches culturing of the embryonic stem cells with an agent that inhibits a bone morphogenic protein "default pathway" so that the differentiated cell that is produced loses at least one marker of the embryonic stem cell. This means, I guess, that after culturing the embryonic stem cell, which say expresses SSEA-4, after culture it loses its expression. The dependent claims actually cover the loss of the embryonic stem cell markers October-4 or cripto, as well as cover the inhibitor of the bone morphogenic default pathway as noggin.

The second independent claim covers a very similar technique of inducing differentiation, but instead of covering "human neural progenitor cell" as the output, it covers "human progenitor cell".

The patent is useful for generating neurons and neural stem cells in vitro for the application to patients with neurodegenerative diseases.

View this patent on the USPTO website.