Endothelial colony forming cells (ECFCs) are rare, highly proliferative endothelial cells that are found in bone marrow and the bloodstream. ECFCs are highly angiogenic and can migrate to sites of blood vessel injury and contribute to repair of the damaged vessels.
In partnership with Professor Mervin Yoder’s laboratory at Indiana University, Axol has developed iPSC-Derived Endothelial Colony Forming Cells that resemble primary ECFCs in their cell surface marker expression and functionality.
Axol iPSC-Derived Endothelial Colony Forming Cells express the endothelial markers CD31, CD144, KDR and NRP1. The endothelial cells align in response to unidirectional shear flow and are responsive to pro-angiogenic factors secreted by fibroblasts. The ECFCs are stable and, unlike other iPSC-derived endothelial cell models, they do not transition to non-endothelial cell types during long-term culture. The endothelial colony forming cells can be passaged up to 10 times, permitting high throughput experiments that require large quantities of cells from the same donor. Axol iPSC-Derived ECFCs have comparable cell marker expression to primary HUVECs and have the advantage of greater consistency and the possibility of performing co-culture experiments with other cell types derived from the same iPSCs such as neural stem cells.
