The widespread availability of huES cells to most laboratories shortly after their isolation – together with the progressive realization that progress with mouse ES cells might not be immediately translatable to their human counterparts – led to a sudden shift of starting material for pancreatic differentiation experiments. The report that arguably initiated this general move toward huES cells was conducted by Assady and collaborators in 2001. Both in adherent and suspension conditions, spontaneous huES cell differentiation resulted in the generation of insulin-producing cells as early as 2 weeks after the initiation of the protocol (peaking at day 19). Their number was relatively small, as only 60% of the EBs had positive staining and only 1–3% of the cells within these showed cytoplasmic insulin signal. In addition, glucose responsiveness was absent, probably due to the difficulty of detection in such a small representation of cells. Read the rest of this entry »