Vascular smooth muscle cell differentiation from human stem/progenitor cells

Transplantation of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) is a promising cellular therapy to promote angiogenesis and wound healing. However, VSMCs are derived from diverse embryonic sources which may influence their role in the development of vascular disease and in its therapeutic modulation. Despite progress in understanding the mechanisms of VSMC differentiation, there remains a shortage of robust methods for generating lineage-specific VSMCs from pluripotent and adult stem/progenitor cells in serum-free conditions. Here we describe a method for differentiating pluripotent stem cells, such as embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells, as well as skin-derived precursors, into lateral plate-derived VSMCs including 'coronary-like' VSMCs and neural crest-derived VSMC, respectively. We believe this approach will have broad applications in modeling origin-specific disease vulnerability and in developing personalized cell-based vascular grafts for regenerative medicine.