The invention relates to a method for differentiating human pluripotent stem cells into fibroblasts, characterized in that the human pluripotent stem cells are cultured on an adherent system in the presence of a medium that is suitable for culturing fibroblasts and in the absence of feeder cells.

Cells in a given population often display heterogeneity that may affect how each cell responds to a particular treatment or growth condition. The methods described herein allow determination of which cells from an initial population survive a treatment or condition, and how surviving cells evolve over time. For example, the methods described herein may be used to model drug resistance, response and/or adaptation in a cell population.

The present invention provides methods of inducing proliferation of and/or differentiating cells comprising contacting cells with compounds within the methods of the invention. The present invention further provides cells obtainable by the methods of the invention.

The present invention relates to a method for preparing commercial scale quantities of canine functional beta cells and to the establishment of cell lines from immature canine pancreatic tissues. It also relates to a method of diagnosis using canine beta cell tumours or cells derived thereof. The method comprises sub-transplantation procedure to enrich the graft in proliferating beta cells, allowing generating canine Beta cell lines. Such lines express, produce and secrete insulin upon glucose stimulation.

Provided are assay systems for determining the therapeutic or toxic effect of a putative drug based on assaying its activity in cells which have been differentiated in vitro from stem cells, and induced to display a phenotype that resembles a disease to be treated.

The present invention relates to the technical field of model establishment, and provides a dimethylmonothioarsinic acid-induced malignantly transformed cell line of human keratinocytes and use thereof. In the present invention, human keratinocytes are persistently exposed to and incubated with dimethylmonothioarsinic acid, to construct an inorganic arsenic metabolite dimethylmonothioarsinic acid (DMMTA.sup.v)-induced malignantly transformed cell model of human keratinocytes. The malignantly transformed cell model of the present invention promotes the identification of carcinogenicity of arsenic methylated metabolites, and indicates that long-term exposure to low-dose arsenic metabolite dimethylmonothioarsinic acid (DMMTA.sup.v) causes malignant transformation of skin cells, thus providing a new cell model basis and new research idea for the study of carcinogenic mechanism of arsenic.

This disclosure relates to methods for expanding inner ear supporting cells (e.g., Lgr5+ inner ear supporting cells) and differentiating inner ear supporting cells (e.g., Lgr5+ inner ear supporting cells) to inner ear hair cells (e.g., atonal homolog 1 (Atoh1)+ inner ear hair cells) and the use of the inner hear supporting cells and hair cells, e.g., for identifying candidate therapeutic compounds for the treatment of hearing loss and balance loss. Additionally, the methods described herein can be used in the treatment of a subject having hearing loss and balance loss that would benefit from increased proliferation and differentiation of inner ear supporting cells (e.g., Lgr5+ inner ear supporting cells).

A use of an MYOG gene as a target in the preparation of a drug for treating a cardiomyocyte apoptosis-associated cardiovascular disease (CVD) is provided. By constructing angiotensin II-induced human induced pluripotent stem cell-differentiated cardiomyocyte apoptosis models in vitro, the present disclosure reveals for the first time the role of the transcription factor MYOG in the inhibition of cardiomyocyte apoptosis and provides a theoretical and scientific basis for drug research and development of cardiomyocyte apoptosis-associated CVDs. Cardiomyocyte apoptosis model becomes a new target for CVD drug research and development.

The present application discloses a human T-lymphoblastic leukemia/lymphoma cell strain named as ZYXY-T1, and its construction method and use thereof. It was conserved in China Center for Type Culture Collection (Wuhan, China) on Jan. 20, 2021, and the preservation number was CCTCC NO: C202143. The present application is obtained by separating mononuclear cells from peripheral blood of one ETP-ALL patient, and culturing the cells in vitro for continuous natural passage. The strain has the typical surface antigen expression characteristics of ETP-ALL, that is, it does not express CD1α, CD5 or CD8, and highly expresses a stem cell marker CD34, and has good proliferation ability in vitro and tumorigenesis ability in vivo; it can be used as a cell material to study the occurrence and development mechanism of ETP-ALL, and can also be used to screen and evaluate ETP-ALL drugs to guide clinical medication.

Long awaited is a human liver-like three-dimensional construct that makes it possible to carry out evaluation of human-specific toxicity and the like accurately and in a simple manner. The present invention provides a human liver-like three-dimensional construct comprising a heterospheroid, in which human hepatic cells and other human-derived cells which are not human hepatic cells are aggregated. This human liver-like three-dimensional construct is characterized in that the other human-derived cells are at least one selected from human hepatic stellate cells and the like, and the other human-derived cell to the human hepatic cell count ratio is at least 0.01 but less than 1.