I’ve heard many complains about flaws of current pluripotency assays from my colleagues for a quite while. Now we got an alternative! New animal-free alternative to the teratoma assay for pluripotency testing – PluriTest. This bioinformatic assay, based on comparison of gene expression profile, was published today in online version of Nature Methods:
Here we report PluriTest, a robust open-access bioinformatic assay of pluripotency in human cells based on their gene expression profiles.
Jeanne Loring, principal investigator of the study said:
Many scientists are unhappy with the current gold standard for testing for pluripotency, called the teratoma assay. The teratoma assay requires animal testing and a time span of six to eight weeks before scientists can prove that they have a pluripotent stem cell line. In addition, this method is technically challenging and difficult to standardize.
Unlike diagnostic tests that use small sets of biomarkers to examine cells, the molecular model approach uses all of the thousands of pieces of information in a microarray. This results in a diagnostic test with remarkable sensitivity and specificity.
The PluriTest web-site, created by Scripps Research Institute is an open access pluripotency assay online:
This site allows for uploading and analysis of .idat files to determine pluripotency in in vitro stem cell preparations.
This assay looks very promising to me. When you have your microarray results, It requires as less as 10 minutes to validate the pluripotency of your cell line. PluriTest could become a standard for human ES and iPS lines validation.
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PS: Unfortunately, the article is not in open access and required subscription or $32.
PPS: The PluriTest web-site is running on Microsoft Silverlight platform.
Related posts:
- Colony-forming cell assay for hematopoietic progenitors – video protocol
- Guidelines and techniques for the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells
- Large-scale expansion of human ES cells in suspension bioreactor
- High-throughput transfection of human embryonic stem cells by electroporation
- Stem cell hemotoxicity testing using the HALO® platform
