E-cadherin gene-engineered feeder systems for supporting undifferentiated growth of mouse embryonic stem cells

Conventionally, embryonic stem (ES) cells are cultured on a cell layer of mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) as feeder cells to support undifferentiated growth of ES cells. In this study, cell–cell interactions between mouse ES and feeder cells were artificially engineered via an epithelial cell adhesion molecule, E-cadherin, whose expression is considerable in ES cells. Mouse mesenchymal STO and NIH3T3 cells that were genetically engineered to express E-cadherin were used in ES cell cultures as feeder cells. ES cells cultured on the E-cadherin-expressing feeder cells maintained the expression of stem cell markers, alkaline phosphatase (AP), Oct3/4, Nanog and Sox2, and the efficiency of AP-positive colony formation was comparable to MEFs, and much better than parental STO and NIH3T3 cells. Furthermore, ES cells maintained on the E-cadherin-expressing feeder cells possessed the ability to differentiate into the three germ layers both in vitro and in vivo. The results indicated that E-cadherin expression in feeder cells could improve the performance of feeder cells, which may be further applicable to create new artificial feeder cell lines.