“…Since we observed a gradually increasing growth rate from passage 5 onwards, we hypothesized that such stem cell markers would become evident when comparing tissue to early passage TFCOs and would increase in expression from early to late passage organoids. No significant change in expression was identified in the putative stem cell markers SCA1 (17,18), ABCG2 (17,19), FUT4 (12), GATA4 (20), HNF4A (20), NANOG (21), OCT4 (12,17,(20)(21)(22), and HHEX (15,23) in human TFCOs (SI Appendix, Fig. S3 A-J).…”