Differentiation of functional endothelial cells from human induced pluripotent stem cells: A novel, highly efficient and cost effective method

•We can directly differentiate hiPSC into EC in a low cost and highly efficient way.•Different culture conditions were demonstrated in this study to improve EC generation.•Both mesoderm and EC differentiation media were optimized and simplified.

Endothelial cells derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSC- EC) are of significant value for research on human vascular development, in vitro disease models and drug screening. Here we report an alternative, highly efficient and cost-effective simple three step method (mesoderm induction, endothelial cell differentiation and endothelial cell expansion) to differentiate hiPSC directly into endothelial cells. We demonstrate that efficiency of described method to derive CD31+ and VE-Cadherin+ double positive cells is higher than 80% in 12 days. Most notably we established that hiPSC-EC differentiation efficacy depends on optimization of both mesoderm differentiation and endothelial cell differentiation steps.