Generation of mesenchymal stem cells from pig embryonic stem cells and comparison with somatic tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cells

During the derivation process, ESC and epithelial marker expression decreased, whereas mesenchymal and MSC marker expression increased. The derived ESC-MSCs exhibited core MSC characteristics, including spindle-shaped morphology, surface marker expression, and trilineage differentiation potential generally comparable to those of adipose tissue-derived MSCs (AT-MSCs). In addition, transcriptome analysis revealed that ESC-MSCs exhibited greater similarity to AT-MSCs than to ESCs.

Notably, although ESC-MSCs showed overall phenotypic and transcriptomic similarities to AT-MSCs, they also displayed distinct features, including lower CD105 expression, enhanced osteogenic and reduced adipogenic differentiation potential. In summary, our study represents the first derivation of MSCs from pig ESCs. Our findings enable the homogeneous and scalable production of ESC-MSCs as an alternative to conventional ST-MSCs.

Given their importance as biomedical models and major livestock species, pig ESC-MSCs derived in this study provide a promising cell source for applications such as preclinical research and cellular agriculture.