Laminins in Cell Culture
Recently, several publications have demonstrated that laminins can be used to culture cells, such as pluripotent stem cells, that are difficult to culture on other substrates. Mostly two types of laminins have been used. Laminin-111 extracted from mouse sarcomas is one popular laminin type, as well as a mixture of laminins 511 and 521 from human placenta. Various laminin isoforms are practically impossible to isolate from tissues in pure form due to extensive cross-linking and the need for harsh extraction conditions such as proteolytic enzymes or low pH that cause degradation. However, professor Tryggvason's group at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden showed how to produce recombinant laminins using HEK293 cells in 2000. Kortesmaa et al. 2000. This made it possible to test if laminins could have a significant role in vitro as they have in the human body. In 2008, two groups independently showed that mouse embryonic stem cell can be grown for months on top of recombinant laminin-511. Later on Rodin et al. showed that recombinant laminin 511 can be used to create a totally xeno-free and defined cell culture environment to culture human pluripotent ES cells and human iPS cells.
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