Description
We monitored 9 pluripotent stem cell lines across three time points of hepatic directed differentiation, representing 3 developmental stages: undifferentiated (T0), definitive endoderm (T5), and early hepatocyte (T24). ESCs (n=3) and patient-derived normal (n=3) or PiZZ (n=3) iPSCs were analyzed in the undifferentiated state (T0), after differentiation to definitive endoderm (T5), and upon reaching hepatic stage (T24) for a total of 27 samples. We sought to test the hypothesis that a single transgene-free iPSC clone from each donor could be used to detect disease-specific differences between the normal cohort and the PiZZ cohort, anticipating that this difference would emerge only at a developmental stage in which the mutant AAT gene is expressed. Cells were sorted before analysis at T0 and T5 after antibody staining for TRA1-80+/SSEA3+ (T0) or C-kit+/CXCR4+ (T5) cells.