Repro. & Maint. of hPSCs Course-NL-Fall

Offered by STEMCELL Technologies, this hands-on training program teaches the core laboratory skills required to derive and culture human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs). The curriculum spans somatic cell reprogramming workflows alongside routine hPSC maintenance procedures, giving attendees a complete pipeline from fibroblast or blood-derived source cells through to feeder-free and feeder-dependent culture systems.

Across multiple days of intensive instruction, participants practice techniques including colony passaging with enzymatic and EDTA-based methods, cryopreservation and thawing of hPSC lines, directed differentiation priming, and quality control screening for pluripotency markers by flow cytometry and immunocytochemistry. Reprogramming modules cover non-integrative approaches such as episomal and Sendai virus delivery, with discussion of footprint-free alternatives and clone selection criteria.

The Fall session is delivered at the STEMCELL Technologies training facility in the Netherlands, with seats limited to enable individual bench time and direct interaction with instructors. Course materials include detailed protocols, reagent lists, and access to commercial-grade media and matrices used during the lab exercises. Attendees leave with reproducible protocols for hPSC expansion, banking, and characterization that can be transferred directly into their own research programs.

Targeted at academic and industrial scientists building cell therapy, disease modeling, or developmental biology workflows, the program supports research use only applications and assumes prior tissue culture experience.