Emergence of CD43-Expressing Hematopoietic Progenitors from Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

The ex vivo generation of human hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) with long-term repopulating capacity and multi-lineage differentiation potential represents the holy grail of hematopoiesis research. In principle, human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) provide the tool for both studying molecular mechanisms of hematopoietic development and the ex vivo production of 'true' HSCs for transplantation purposes and lineage-specific cells, e.g. red blood cells, for transfusion purposes. CD43-expressing cells have been reported as the first hematopoietic cells during development, but whether or not these possess multilineage differentiation and long-term engraftment potential is incompletely understood.