Promoting the functional maturation of the desired cell types derived from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) remains a major challenge, especially for hepatocytes, as routine access to metabolically functional hepatocytes would enable their use in drug toxicity screening. Although previous attempts to induce hepatic specification from hPSCs yielded cells possessing some hepatic features [1][2][3], most of these cells showed poor metabolic activities, and the responsible mechanisms are unknown. In this study, we explored the intrinsic defects in hPSCderived immature hepatocytes and tested whether correcting these defects would promote the metabolic maturation of the differentiated cells.One possible explanation for the inability to derive mature hepatic cells is incomplete specification of the differentiated cells [4] caused by the lack of some key transcription factors. To test this hypothesis, immunofluorescence staining was carried out to assess the coexpression of a panel of crucial transcription factors, including FOXA2, GATA4, HNF4A, GATA6, PROX1, HNF6 and TBX3, along with the mature hepatocyte markers ALB and CYP3A4 in hepatocyte-like cells differentiated from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs), according to a previously published protocol [5]. Although ALB was efficiently expressed and co-localized with HNF4A in hepatocyte-like cells differentiated from hESCs, CYP3A4 was rarely observed in the differentiated cultures (Supplementary information, Data S1 and Figure S1A-S1B). Surprisingly, the limited expression of CYP3A4 correlated well with the expression of PROX1 and HNF6, which also were rarely observed in the cultures. When cells at the hepatoblast stage were characterized, similar defects were already present (Supplementary information, Figure S1C-S1E). Although FOXA2, GATA4, HNF4A and GATA6 were expressed ubiquitously (> 95%) in hESC-derived AFP-positive cells, PROX1 and HNF6 were barely detectable (< 0.1%). Interestingly,