It is provided a method of producing high-quality engineered cartilage graft in a human of animal, such as nasal cartilage graft, comprising expanding chondrocytes and/or chondroprogenitors, e.g. autologous human nasoseptal chondrocytes (hNC,) from a donor patient by selecting expanded chondrocytes and/or chondroprogenitors by detecting the expression of at least one surfaceome protein gene or secretome protein gene, wherein the at least one surfaceome protein gene is ADGRG1, NPR3, SLC16A4, TSPAN13, FZD4 and SLC22A23 and the at least one secretome protein gene is ADGRG1, B3GNT7, COLGALT2, IGFBP3, STC2, SAA1, ANGPLT1, COL8A2, INHBB, ADAMTS9, ORM1, COL14A1, DCN, COL21A1, ENOX1, IL7, MXRA5 GAL, TFRC, SERPINA9, LIF, GDF6 and COL5A3.

The invention relates to improved methods for culturing an epithelial stem cell or an organoid comprising epithelial stem cells. The invention also relates to culture media suitable for use with said methods, organoids obtainable or obtained by said methods and uses of said culture methods, media and organoids in drug discovery and validation, toxicity assays, diagnostics and therapy.

The subject matter of the present invention is a method for differentiating epithelial stem cells, comprising culturing one or more epithelial stem cells in contact with an extracellular matrix in the presence of an expansion medium, a bovine pituitary extract, a receptor tyrosine kinase ligand, a supernatant of primary fibroblasts and optionally, a Rho kinase inhibitor.

The present invention relates to methods for obtaining a substantially pure population of pluripotent stem cell-derived airway basal-like cells. It also relates to a method of obtaining an in vitro pluripotent stem cell-derived airway epithelium model, utilising the pluripotent stem cell-derived airway basal-like cells. The invention further relates to an in vitro airway epithelial model, or lung model, which can be used for disease modelling and/or drug screening and in particular to an in vitro model for SARS-CoV-2 infection and for screening for agents effective against infection with SARS-CoV-2 i.e. COVID-19 and methods of using the same.

The present disclosure provides methods of evaluating a therapeutic agent for cancer, and methods of cancer treatment.

As an approach of efficiently inducing differentiation from pluripotent stem cells into insulin-producing cells, provided is a method comprising the step of three-dimensionally culturing cells in a medium containing a dihydroindolizinone derivative.

Provided is a cell culture sheet. A cell culture sheet according to an embodiment of the present invention includes: a fiber web which has a 3-dimensional network structure formed through the accumulation of support fibers having an average diameter of at most 1.5 μm, and has a basis weight of 1 to 15 g/m.sup.2; and a functional coating layer which is coated on the support fibers exposed on at least one surface of the fiber web, and has a function of promoting one or more of the adhesion, movement, proliferation, and differentiation of cells. Accordingly, cell adhesion is improved due to the large specific surface area and the surface morphology suitable for cells, and the adhered cells are stably supported. Moreover, the cells can be cultured at high density at a high culture efficiency, and can be cultured and recovered without agglomeration caused by forming a thin film.

Human raphe nuclei organoids or spheroids (hRNS) are generated in vitro, which may be generated at least in part from human pluripotent stem (hPS) cells. Such spheroids model the human raphe nuclei and comprise specific sets of cells, e.g. serotonergic neurons, that are associated with the raphe nuclei of a human, and can be assembled with cortical spheroids (hCS) to generate functional human neuromodulatory circuits.

Provided is a cell structure including: a connective tissue structure; and an epithelial structure placed on the connective tissue structure, in which the connective tissue structure contains a fragmented extracellular matrix component and first cells including mesenchymal cells, at least a part of the fragmented extracellular matrix component is placed between the first cells, and the epithelial structure contains epithelial cells.

The present invention includes a functionalized nerve guidance conduit (NGC), methods of making neurotrophic factor-expressing neural crest stem-like cells (NCSC) and/or Schwann cell precursor-like (SCP) cells, methods of making the functionalized nerve guidance conduit, and methods of treating nerve injury using the functionalized nerve guidance conduit.