Effect of different feeding schedules on the survival and neural differentiation of human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells.

Neural culture of human pluripotent stem cells is useful for neuroscience research, but the optimal feeding schedule for these in vitro systems is unclear. We evaluated the survival and neural differentiation profiles of human embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells cultured with medium exchange schedules of five, six, or seven days weekly through two months of differentiation. No significant differences were seen in cell numbers or neural differentiation markers through this culture interval with either human pluripotent cell type. We conclude that there is unlikely to be an advantage of feeding more than five days weekly for this culture system.