Speaker: Christopher Sturgeon, Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine associate professor of cell, developmental and regenerative biology and of medicine, hematology and medical oncology.

Title: "hPSC-derived hemogenic endothelium – Which one do you want?”

Abstract: The generation of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and terminally differentiated immune cell lineages from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) are major goals for regenerative medicine. During embryonic development, all hematopoietic progenitors derive from hemogenic endothelium (HE), in various locations within the embryonic and extra-embryonic tissues. The hematopoietic lineages derived from these different HE populations exhibit different functional properties, indicating that ontogeny is a critical determinant of function. Therefore, understanding how these different HE populations develop from hPSCs will be absolutely critical in the design of future clinical applications applications. In my lecture I will provide an overview of how the mammalian hematopoietic system develops in the early embryo, and our efforts at recapitulating each developmental program from hPSCs, by focusing on both human HE development, and the earliest distinct precursor of HE, hemogenic mesoderm. Through signal- and stage-specific differentiation strategies, we can selectively obtain distinct populations of hemogenic mesoderm from hPSCs, which give rise to functionally distinct HE populations that harbor restricted lineage potential. Further, I will discuss the implications of these differentiation strategies and distinct HE populations, in the design of natural killer (NK) cell-based adoptive immunotherapy applications.

Host: Raquel Espin Palazon, Department of Genetics, Development and Cell Biology