Product Information Sheet

 StemBeads^® FGF2

 StemBeads^® Activin-A

 StemBeads^® Blank15

 StemBeads^® BDNF

 StemBeads^® GDNF

 StemBeads^® FAQ

- Will StemBeads® interfere with my downstream application of the cells?

StemBeads® can be easily removed prior to analysis by washing 1-2 times with PBS, DMEM, F12 or any other basal medium preferred. For suspension cultures, there are a variety of strainer pore sizes to allow for separation. Cells cultured with StemBeads® have been used in a variety of downstream applications,
including but not limited to: immunofluorescence, FACS, RNA/DNA extraction, nucleofection, differentiation etc.

- What if I want to use a different concentration, can the protein release be adjusted?

Not a problem. The protein concentration can be adjusted based on the number of StemBeads® that you use. The release rate has a linear correlation with the amount of StemBeads® used. For example, 8μL of StemBeads® per mL of media releases at a concentration of 10ng/mL. However, if you desire half of that
concentration, such as 5ng/mL, then adjust the concentration to 4μL of StemBeads® per mL media to achieve the concentration of 5ng/mL.

- What is the average cost savings when using StemBeads®?

The cost savings generally fall between 5-25%. However, the savings truly depends on a number of variables, such as media type, media cost, concentration used and feeding method. Additional savings can be included when considering time and labor cost. Please contact us for specific inquiries regarding cost.

- The pH indicator in my growth medium appears very yellow when not changing media daily. Is this a problem?

No, this is not a problem or indication of cell quality. Extensive testing has been performed to access the cell quality when using StemBeads®. All phenotypic and functional assays have shown cell quality as good or better than current feeding regimens. For best assessment of cells, wash cells once prior to observation.

I used the Stem Culture FGF2 beads on both a normal line and Swachman-Diamond Syndrome line of human iPS cells in my media over the weekend. I added iPS media with the Stem Culture FGF2 beads substituting for the FGF in my typical media on Friday, and by Monday my cultures still looked remarkably healthy. It’s so liberating to know there’s a product to relieve the weekend culture feeding!

Christine Miller,
Research Assistant Harvard University, Joslin Diabetes Center,
Amy Wagers Lab

The beads worked very well in my hands, I used for the last week end and did not observe any differentiation.

Salvatore Iovino,
Postdoctoral fellow Joslin Diabetes Center,
Ronald Kahn Lab

StemBeads worked beautifully on our cells. After 1 month of culturing in Stembeads, the hESC colonies remained nice and undifferentiated, and even seemed to grow faster than in conventional hESC media with bFGF. It’s excellent that we no longer need to come in to change medium during the weekends.

Agnette Kirkeby,
Postdoctoral Fellow Lund University,
Anders Bjorklund Lab

In my hands, StemBeads work very well, even when cells are cultured on matrigel in using TESR. I have been feeding my cells very 3 days, and the look at least as good, if not better than cells fed every day without StemBeads. This allows me to take care of more cell lines at once, and to spend more time doing things besides routine tissue culture.

Maureen Sherry Lynes, 
Post-Doctoral Fellow Harvard Stem Cell Institute, 
Lee Rubin Lab

I am an Assistant Professor in Johns Hopkins University, School of Medicine. I have extensive experience of culturing human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) more than 7 years now. Luckily my lab had a chance to test FGF2 Beads for maintaining hESCs and hiPSCs. FGF2- beads showed successful results. Whenever I met someone who wants to start any research with hESCs and hiPSCs, they are worrying about tissue culture. Indeed these cells need very special care. One of the issues is that these cells should be fed everyday, which compromises several things, including work hours during weekend and holiday season, wasting expensive culture media and increasing chances of contamination. But the FGF2-beads can solve these issues and should be very attractive choice for the researchers who are working on these particular cell types.

Gabsang Lee, 
Ph.D., D.V.M., 
Assistant Professor Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

We choose StemBeads FGF2 in order to use in combination with cell surface marker antibody for live cell immunostaining, and we have been very pleased with the product:
Stembeads FGF2 are stable with good quality, the beads gradually release FGF2 into the cell culture medium, which allow us to finish the assays in a 2-3 days timeframe without medium change.

Monica Zhou, 
Staff Scientist New York Stem Cell Foundation

The StemBeads FGF2 worked really well in my hands. They allowed me to change the media every 3 or 4 days without any problems with differentiation. After a week and half of using StemBeads FGF2 I had beautiful plates of undifferentiated stem cells while using half the amount of media. This allowed me to spend more time doing important experiments and spend less money on expensive stem cell media.

Jack Sandoe,
Graduate Student Harvard Stem Cell Institute, 
Kevin Eggan Lab

2020

Halliwell J. A., Frith T. J. R., Laing O., Price C. J., Bower O. J., Stavish D., Gokhale P. J., Hewitt Z., El-Khamisy S. F., Barbaric I., Andrews P. W. (2020) Nucleosides Rescue Replication-Mediated Genome Instability of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells. Stem Cell Reports 14: 1009-1017 Link Click Here

Yu-Ching Lin Z., Nakai R., Hirai H., Kozuka D., Katayama S., Nakamura S., Okada S., Kitajima R., Imai H., Okano H., Imamura M. (2020) Reprogramming of Chimpanzee Fibroblasts into a Multipotent Cancerous but not Fully Pluripotent State by Transducing iPSC Factors in 2i/LIF Culture. Differentiation 112: 67-76 Link Click Here

Kafer G. R., Rillo-Bohn R., Carlton P. M. (2020) Sequential Enrichment at the Nuclear Periphery of H2A.Zac and H3K9me2 Accompanies Pluripotency Loss in Human Embryonic Stem Cells. bioRxiv Link Click Here

Kitajima R., Nakai R., Imamura T., Kameda T., Kozuka D., Hirai H., Ito H., Imai H., Imamura M. (2020) Modeling of Early Neural Development in Vitro by Direct Neurosphere Formation Culture of Chimpanzee Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells. Stem Cell Research 44: 101749 Link Click Here

2019

Bowles K. R., T. C. W. Julia, Qian L., Jadow B. M., Goate A. M. (2018) Reduced Variability of Neural Progenitor Cells and Improved Purity of Neuronal Cultures Using Magnetic Activated Cell Sorting. PLoS ONE 14(3): e0213374 Link Click Here

Karch C. M., Kao A. W., Karydas A., Onanuga K., Martinez R., Argouarch A., Wang C., Huang C., Sohn P. D., Bowles K. R., Spina S., Silva M. C., Marsh J. A., Hsu S., Pugh D. A., Ghoshal N., Norton J., Huang Y., Lee S. E., Seeley W. W., Theofilas P., Grinberg L. T., Moreno F., Mcllroy K., Boeve B. F., Cairns N. J., Crary J. F., Haggarty S. J., Ichida J. K., Kosik K. S., Miller B. L., Gan L., Goate A. M., Temple S., Tau Consortium Stem Cell Group (2019)  A Comprehensive Resource for Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells from Patients with Primary Tauopathies. Stem Cell Reports 13: 939-955 Link Click Here

TCW J., Liang S. A., Qian L., Pipalia N. H., Chao M. J., Bertelsen S. E., Kapoor M., Marcora E., Sikora E., Holtzman D., Maxfield F. R., Zhang B., Wang M., Poon W. W., Goate A. M. (2019) Cholesterol and Matrisome Pathways Dysregulated in Human APOE ∊4 Glia. Cell Link Click Here

2018

Kakutani, H., Yuzuriha T., Akiyama E., Nakao T., Ohta S. (2018), Complex Toxicity as Disruption of Adipocyte or Osteoblast Differentiation in Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells under the Mixed Condition of TBBPA and TCDD. Toxicology Reports 5: 737-743 Link Click Here

Nakai R., Ohnuki M., Kuroki K., Ito H., Hirai H., Kitajima R., Fujimoto T., Nakagawa M., Enard W., Imamura M. (2018) Derivation of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells in Japanese Macaque (Macaca fuscata). Scientific Reports 8: 12187 Link Click Here

Muhammad A. K. M. G., Kim K., Epifantseva I., Aghamaleky‐Sarvestany A., Simpkinson E. M., Carmona S., Landeros J., Bell S., Svaren J., Baloh R. (2018) Cell Transplantation Strategies for Acquired and Inherited Disorders of Peripheral Myelin. Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology 2018; 5(2): 186–200 Link Click Here

2017

TCW, J., Carvalho, C. M. B., Yuan, B., Gu, S., Altheimer, A. N., McCarthy, S., Malhotra, D., Sebat, J., Siegel, A. J., Rudolph, U., Lupski, J. R., Levy, L. L., Brennand, K. J. (2017), Divergent Levels of Marker Chromosomes in an hiPSC-Based Model of Psychosis, Stem Cell Reports (2017) Link Click Here 

Endo M., Ubulkasim G., Kobayashi C., Onishi R., Aiba A., Minami Y. (2017) Critical Role of Ror2 Receptor Tyrosine Kinase in Regulating Cell Cycle Progression of Reactive Astrocytes Following Brain Injury. Glia: 65(1): 182-197 Link Click Here

2016

Endo, M., Ubulkasim, G., Kobayashi, C., Onishi, R., Aiba, A. and Minami, Y. (2016), Critical role of Ror2 receptor tyrosine kinase in regulating cell cycle progression of reactive astrocytes following brain injury. Glia. Link Click Here

Rigamonti, A., Repetti, G. G., Sun, C., Price, F. D., Reny, D. C., Rapino, F., Weisinger, K., Benkler, C., Peterson, Q. P., Davidow, L. S., Hansson, E. M. and Rubin, Lee. (2016). Large-Scale Production of Mature Neurons from Human Pluripotent Stem Cellls in a Three-Dimensional Suspension Culture System. Stem Cell Reports. 6:6;993-1008. Link Click Here

Tomov, M. L., Tsompana, M., Olmsted, Z. T., Buck, M. and Paluh, J. L. (2016), Human Embryoid Body Transcriptomes Reveal Maturation Differences Influenced by Size and Formation in Custom Microarrays. J. Nanoscience and Nanotechnoogy. 16:9: pp. 8978-8988(11) Link Click Here

2015

Tomov, M. L., Olmsted, Z. T. and Paluh, J. L. (2015), The Human Embryoid Body Cystic Core Exhibits Architectural Complexity Revealed by use of High Throughput Polymer Microarrays. Macromol. Biosci., 15: 892–900. Link Click Here

Chang, E. A., Tomov, M. L., Suhr, S. T., Luo, J., Olmsted, Z. T., Paluh, J. L. and Cibelli, J. (2015), Derivation of Ethically Diverse Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Lines. Scientific Reports.,5: 15234. Link Click Here

2014

Van de Leemput J., Boles, N. C., Kiehl, T. R., Corneo, B., Lederman, P., Menon, V., Lee, C., Martinex, R. A., Levi, B. P., Thompson, C. L., Yao, S., Kaykas, A., Temple, S., Fasano, C. A. (2014) CORTECON: a temporal transcriptome analysis of in vitro human cerebral cortex development from human embryonic stem cells. Neuron. 2;83(1):51-68. Link Click Here

Boles, N.C., Hirsch, S. E., Le, S., Corneo, B., Najm, F., Minotti, A. P., Wang, Q., Lotz, S., Tesar, P. J., Fasano, C. A. (2014) NPTX1 regulates neural lineage specification from human pluripotent stem cells. Cell Rep. 6(4):724-36. Link Click Here

2013

Lotz S., Goderie, S., Tokas, N., Hirsch, S. E., Ahmad, F., Corneo, B., Le, L., Banerjee, A., Kane, R. S., Stern, J. H., Temple, S., Fasano, C. A. (2013) Sustained Levels of FGF2 Maintain Undifferentiated Stem Cell Cultures with Biweekly Feeding. PLoS ONE 8(2). Link Click Here