Retinoic acid enhances the generation of hematopoietic progenitors from human embryonic stem cell–derived hemato-vascular precursors

Current induction schemes directing hematopoietic differentiation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are not well defined to mimic the sequential stages of hematopoietic development in vivo. Here, we report a 3-stage method to direct differentiation of hESCs toward hematopoietic progenitors in chemically defined mediums. In the first 2 stages, we efficiently generated T-positive primitive streak/mesendoderm cells and kinase domain receptor–positive (KDR+) platelet-derived growth factor receptor α–negative (PDGFRα−) hemato-vascular precursors sequentially. In the third stage, we found that cells in a spontaneous differentiation condition mainly formed erythroid colonies. Addition of all-trans retinoic acid (RA) greatly enhanced generation of hematopoietic progenitors in this stage while suppressing erythroid development. The RA-treated cells highly expressed definitive hematopoietic genes, formed large numbers of multilineage and myeloid colonies, and gave rise to greater than 45% CD45+ hematopoietic cells. When hematopoietic progenitors were selected with CD34 and C-Kit, greater than 95% CD45+ hematopoietic cells could be generated. In addition, we found that endogenous RA signaling at the second stage was required for vascular endothelial growth factor/basic fibroblast growth factor–induced hemato-vascular specification, whereas exogenously applied RA efficiently induced KDR−PDGFRα+ paraxial mesoderm cells. Our study suggests that RA signaling plays diverse roles in human mesoderm and hematopoietic development.