The same day results of a new approach to growing stem cells in culture were published in Nature, Stem Cell Sciences in Australia announced that it was launching a new product based on that work. The culture system will grow mouse embryonic stem cells without feeder cells or serum. And yes, they’ve patented it. That was announced just a few days before the paper published.

The paper from Austin Smith’s lab shows that it’s not necessary to actively trigger self-renewal to grow stem cells, but inhibiting differentiation seems to be sufficient. That’s interesting because while activating self-renewal seems to rely on complex biological components, often secreted from feeder cells, inhibiting pathways can often be accomplished more easily and using cheaper small molecules.

(Smith is one of the scientists that found self-renewal factor Nanog for humans and LIF for mice; so it’s sort of full circle that now his lab discovers how to get around these renewal factors.) I interviewed Qi-Long Ying, the lead author on this work for a Making the Paper. I’ve also recently interviewed Sheng Ding on how to use small molecules to facilitate self renewal and differentiation.

Here’s a snip from the press release:

“Professor Smith’s research is a major step forward in embryonic stem cell research and elucidates some of the early mechanisms involved in self-renewal and differentiation,” noted Dr Tim Allsopp, Chief Scientific Officer of Stem Cell Sciences. “We have now leveraged this significant advance into our novel media product Culticell iSTEM, which we believe will help provide researchers with a more pure starting point for embryonic stem cell research.”