Culturing pluripotent stem cells: State of the art, challenges and future opportunities

Pluripotent stem cells are a valuable tool to study development in vitro and can be beneficial for regenerative medicine applications. Here, we first review state-of-the-art methodologies to culture mouse embryonic and human pluripotent stem cells. We then review progress in integrating computational and synthetic biology methodologies for understanding and engineering pluripotent stem cell fate, and we offer our opinion on the next steps for increasing the robustness and scalability of pluripotent stem cells’ culture protocols. •A range of culture protocols have been proposed for pluripotent stem cells.•Mathematical modelling and statistical analysis can help the understanding of stem cell dynamics.•There is scope for machine learning and synthetic biology approaches to rationally design pluripotent stem cell fate.