Clinical and industrial applications of pluripotent stem cells and stem cell derivatives such as cardiomyocytes require large quantities of cells. Until recently, production of required cell numbers was hampered by the lack of large scale expansion techniques as well as the unavailability of patient-specific cell lines. Recent developments in embryonic stem (ES) cell suspension culture and the generation of patient-specific induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells now represent major breakthroughs in stem cell research. Similarly to ES cells, iPS cells can be expanded indefinitely and differentiated into diverse cellular subtypes.

The BIO-DISC project aims at the development of a large-scale suspension culture system for differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells (ES and iPS cells) into cardiovascular progenitors and functional cardiomyocytes. In close collaboration with Professor Joseph Itskovitz-Eldor and his group, Technion Institute of Technology, Israel, Haifa, who have established a method for culturing ES cells in free floating aggregates, enabling a scale-up of 25 folds in 10 days, we will optimize the system and adapt to iPS cells concurrently. Initial results demonstrate that the dynamic culture system can serve as a basis for the development of a controlled process for mass production of human iPS cells and their derivatives in bioreactors. The development will constitute an important and necessary step towards applicable cardiomyogenic cell preparations for myocardial cell therapy, construction of bioartificial cardiac tissue and for high throughput drug screening.