Differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells into airway epithelial cells

Introduction: Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs), like embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), offer promising new therapeutic options to treat lung diseases, such as cystic fibrosis or surfactant deficiencies, based on cellular/tissue replacement therapies, disease modelling and drug screening. These regenerative approaches crucially rely on the efficient differentiation of PSCs into lung epithelial cells which is the aim of our present study. Methods: We made use of the human (h)ESC reporter cell line hES3 NKX2.1-eGFP (kindly provided by the lab of A. Elefanty) expressing eGFP under…