Energy metabolism in human pluripotent stem cells and their differentiated counterparts.

TLDR: The results demonstrate that, although the metabolic signature of IPSCs is not identical to that of hESCs, nonetheless they cluster with h ESCs rather than with their somatic counterparts, revealing that human pluripotent cells rely mostly on glycolysis to meet their energy demands.

Abstract: Background Human pluripotent stem cells have the ability to generate all cell types present in the adult organism, therefore harboring great potential for the in vitro study of differentiation and for the development of cell-based therapies. Nonetheless their use may prove challenging as incomplete differentiation of these cells might lead to tumoregenicity. Interestingly, many cancer types have been reported to display metabolic modifications with features that might be similar to stem cells. Understanding the metabolic properties of human pluripotent stem cells when compared to their differentiated counterparts can thus be of crucial importance. Furthermore recent data has stressed distinct features of different human pluripotent cells lines, namely when comparing embryo-derived human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (IPSCs) reprogrammed from somatic cells.