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Summary Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) represent a promising source of patient-specific cells for disease modeling, drug screens, and cellular therapies. However, the inability to derive engraftable human hematopoietic stem and progenitor (HSPCs) has limited their characterization to in vitro assays. We report a strategy to re-specify lineage-restricted CD34+CD45+ myeloid precursors derived from hPSCs into multilineage progenitors that can be expanded in vitro and engraft in vivo. HOXA9, ERG, and RORA conferred self-renewal and multilineage potential in vitro and maintained primitive CD34+CD38− cells. Screening cells via transplantation revealed that two additional factors, SOX4 and MYB, were required for engraftment. Progenitors specified with all five factors gave rise to reproducible short-term engraftment with myeloid and erythroid lineages. Erythroid precursors underwent hemoglobin switching in vivo, silencing embryonic and activating adult globin expression. Our combinatorial screening approach establishes a strategy for obtaining transcription factor-mediated engraftment of blood progenitors from human pluripotent cells.

Versatile and precise genome modifications are needed for a wider range of adoptive cellular therapies 1-5. Here we report two improvements that increase the efficiency of CRISPR-Cas9-Users may view, print, copy, and download text and data-mine the content in such documents, for the purposes of academic research, subject always to the full Conditions of use:

Generating human hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) from autologous tissues, when coupled with genome editing technologies, is a promising approach for cellular transplantation therapy and for in vitro disease modeling, drug discovery, and toxicology studies. Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) represent a potentially inexhaustible supply of autologous tissue; however, to date, directed differentiation from hPSCs has yielded hematopoietic cells that lack robust and sustained multilineage potential. Cellular reprogramming technologies represent an alternative platform for the de novo generation of HSCs via direct conversion from heterologous cell types. In this review, we discuss the latest advancements in HSC generation by directed differentiation from hPSCs or direct conversion from somatic cells, and highlight their applications in research and prospects for therapy.