An integrated miniature bioprocessing for personalized human induced pluripotent stem cell expansion and differentiation into neural stem cells

Human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are ideal cell sources for personalized cell therapies since they can be expanded to generate large numbers of cells and differentiated into presumably all the cell types of the human body in vitro. In addition, patient specific iPSC-derived cells induce minimal or no immune response in vivo. However, with current cell culture technologies and bioprocessing, the cost for biomanufacturing clinical-grade patient specific iPSCs and their derivatives are very high and not affordable for majority of patients. In this paper, we explored the use of closed and miniature cell culture device for biomanufacturing patient specific neural stem cells (NSCs) from iPSCs. We demonstrated that, with the assist of a thermoreversible hydrogel scaffold, the bioprocessing including iPSC expansion, iPSC differentiation into NSCs, the subsequent depletion of undifferentiated iPSCs from the NSCs, and concentrating and transporting the purified NSCs to the surgery room, could be integrated and completed within two closed 15 ml conical tubes.