By introducing the use of LN521, shifting our culture methods away from relying on murine feeders or other less defined substrates, we have simplified the day-to-day expansion of our human pluripotent stem cells (hPSC) and significantly reduced the amount of required operator time. Having worked extensively with other culture methods for hPSCs, and thereby familiar with the high costs of consumables required, I am pleased to find that our new costs are only a fraction (7%) of what they used to be when we relied on traditional methods that used murine embryonic fibroblasts (MEF).

In our efforts to study the development of blood, we have found that keeping our hPSCs on LN521 is compatible with subsequent differentiation towards the hematopoietic lineage, further adding to the usefulness of this substrate regarding our experiments.

 
"The use of recombinant laminins in conjunction with our differentiation systems have significantly advanced stem cell-derived hepatocyte performance and polarity. Importantly, those processes are now fully defined, and GMP ready, offering an exciting prospect for human regenerative medicine”

Read more about how hr laminins drive the differentiation and self-organization of hESC-derived hepatocytes in Stem Cell Reports, 2015.

"We have struggled for a number of years to establish a GMP manufacturing process for generating DA neurons from human embryonic stem cells in order to develop a stem cell-based therapy for Parkinson’s Disease. The recombinant laminins from Biolamina really made a world of difference! We now routinely use LN521 and EDTA for passaging the pluripotent stem cells and we have greater efficiency than ever before. It also turns out
that the DA progenitor cells love to grow on LN111 and after introducing this into our
the protocol we now have a high yield, high-quality GMP differentiation ready to use”

A GMP differentiation protocol for highly efficient and reproducible production of transplantable dopamine progenitors from hESCs on laminin-111 have been published in Cell Stem Cell, 2016.

“Our iPSC culture on LN521 is easy and stable. The use of LN521 allows us to maintain the iPSCs in monolayer culture for a prolonged time and also supports the differentiation of MKs and PLTs. It represents a good alternative to other matrices especially as it is fully defined and therefore compatible with GMP standards."

Dorothee Eicke, Ph.D. Student, Hannover Medical School, Germany

The animal origin-free and defined protocol for the generation of functional megakaryocytes and platelets from an HLA-universal iPSCs on the human recombinant laminin-521 culture substrate was published in Molecular Medicine, 2016. 

 "We at the iPS core at Karolinska Institutet use laminin-521 for derivation and maintenance of our iPS cells. It is reliable, consistent and user-friendly for us and for our customers."

Malin Kele, Sr Lab Manager, iPS Core/Anna Falk lab, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

Generation of human iPS cell lines from human fibroblasts, under defined and animal component-free conditions, has been published in Stem cell research, 2016 and 2017.

"The beginning of my project required the introduction of fully defined culture conditions for both the self-renewal and subsequent differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs). In conjunction with fully defined media, I evaluated the performance of various commercially available matrices for their ability to support hPSC self-renewal. Recombinant laminin-521 (LN521) quickly became my favorite due to reliable passaging outcomes, speed of hPSC growth and the absence of spontaneous differentiation. Following the adaptation of 10 clinical-grade human embryonic stem cell lines to this matrix we found no detriment to their genetic stability as seen by SNP array analysis. It is safe to say that with the use of LN521, the culture of human PSCs has become as straight-forward as that of their mouse counterparts.”

Dr. Maurice A. Canham, MRC Centre for regenerative medicine, The University of Edinburgh, UK


LN-521 was used in the report published by Canham et al., The Molecular Karyotype of 25 Clinical-Grade Human Embryonic Stem Cell Lines, Scientific Reports, 2015.

"We have changed our hESC and hiPSC cultures from a MEF-based system to laminin-521 in combination with Nutristem medium. This system allows a more standardized culture, independent of variable batches of MEFs. We experienced that the laminin-521 culture system has high efficiency and lower labor-intensity when compared to the MEF-based systems. LN521 enabled us to culture our cell lines more flexibly, using only small quantities of cells for routine maintenance of lines and allowing a fast upscaling of cultures when experiments are planned.

"Those were the days when laborious preparatory steps were necessary even before the actual passaging
of hES cells. Most of my time was utilized to inactivate feeder layers, harvest conditioned media or manual
dissection of the undifferentiated pluripotent colonies under a microscope. I also frequently encountered
inconsistent results that were possibly due to batch-to-batch variation in the various coating matrices.
However, the introduction of BioLaminas laminin-521 makes notoriously difficult hES cells passaging so easy.
Today, I passage my cells as single cells without ROCKi in significantly less time and with a higher yield.
The uniform pluripotent cells mean no more tedious manual picking of colonies and gives highly reproducible 
results"

"Before BioLamina, it was challenging to assess the reactivity of individual laminin isoforms towards cells because it is very difficult to purify laminins from tissues. Using the recombinant and very pure laminins from BioLamina, we could show that vascular isoforms containing the α5 or α4 but not α2 chain support efficient blood platelet adhesion and activation under flow in a process dependent on integrin α6β1, GPVI and the GPIb-VWF axis."

Dr. Mathieu Schaff, INSERM, Université de Strasbourg, France


Different laminin isoforms were used in: 
"Integrin α6β1 is the Main Receptor for Vascular Laminins and Plays a Role in Platelet Adhesion, Activation
and Arterial Thrombosis", published in Circulation, 2013.

"BioLamina's laminin-511 allows mouse ES cells to grow as a monolayer even on glass, which is suitable especially for live imaging."

Dr. Yusuke Miyanari, IGBMC, France


Laminin-511 was used as a growth matrix in Dr. Miyanari study: control of ground-state pluripotency by allelic 
regulation of Nanog, published in Nature, 2012.

"Commercial preparations of laminin from other sources tended to be inconsistent mixtures of multiple laminin isoforms. The recombinant laminins from Biolamina allowed us to identify interactions between MCAM and specific isoforms of laminin that may underlay important aspects of T cell biology."

Dr. Kenneth Flanagan, Elan Pharmaceuticals, USA


Laminin-411 was used in Dr. Flanagan's study: "Laminin-411 is a Vascular Ligand for MCAM and Facilitates 
TH17 Cell Entry into the CNS" published in PLOS ONE, 2012.