Investigating role of FGF10 in differentiation of human lung alvelolar epithelial cells using human ESCs and hiPSCs.

Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent stem cells derived from the inner cell mass of a blastocyst (an early-stage pre-implantation embryo). The hallmark features of these cells are self-renewal ability to differentiate into different cell types. They also can generate three germ layers in vitro. The aforementioned properties of these cells make them a very powerful scientific tool to study organogenesis (signaling pathways involved in developmental process of process of different tissues), cell differentiation and repair process followed tissue injury. Due to almost unlimited potential of these pluripotent cells to differentiate to other cell types, they can be a very important asset for regenerative medicine and tissue replacement. They are also being used to screen new drugs.

In theory, almost any adult mammalian cells can be reprogramed to pluripotent stemness state using ectopic expression of different master genes of pluripotency, called human induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (hiPSCs). Using this new technology provided invaluable knowledge regarding pathways involved in the pluripotency as well as cells differentiation.

Significance of Fgf-10 signaling pathway in the murine lung development has been extensively studied. However, the role of this signaling pathway in human model has yet to be elaborated. Thus, we would like to study the role of FGF-10 signaling in human lung development model using differentiation of hiPSCs to lung alveolar epithelial lineages.