A microwell chip for parallel culture and analysis of stem cells

With recent findings on the role of reprogramming factors on stem cells, in vitro screening assays for studying (de)-differentiation is of great interest. We developed a miniaturized stem cell screening chip that is easily accessible and provides means of rapidly studying thousands of individual stem/progenitor cell samples, using low reagent volumes. Results presented here include weeklong culturing and differentiation assays of mouse embryonic stem cells, mouse adult neural stem cells, and human embryonic stem cells. The possibility to maintain the cells as stem/progenitor cells over time was shown, as was isolation and clonal analysis.