A defined glycosaminoglycan-binding substratum for human pluripotent stem cells

To exploit the full potential of human pluripotent stem cells for regenerative medicine, developmental biology, and drug discovery, defined culture conditions are needed. Media of known composition that maintain human embryonic stem (hES) cells have been developed, but finding chemically-defined, robust substrata has proved difficult. We employed an array of self-assembled monolayers to identify peptide surfaces that sustain pluripotent stem cell self-renewal. The effective substrates display heparin-binding peptides, which can interact with cell surface glycosaminoglycans, and can be used with a defined medium to culture hES cells for more than 3 months. The resulting cells maintain a normal karyotype and display high levels of pluripotency markers. The peptides are able to support growth of multiple (eight) pluripotent cell lines on a variety of scaffolds. Our results indicate that synthetic substrates that recognize cell surface glycans can facilitate the long-term culture of pluripotent stem cells.