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| Cell type | Therapeutic use | Differentiation method | Advantages | Disadvantages |
|
| Erythrocytes (RBCs) | Transfusions for severe anemia or blood loss | EBs, HBs, and/or stroma coculture | Potential for alleviating shortages; production of pathogen-free (O)Rh- “universal donor” RBCs | Inefficient enucleation; difficulties in switching to adult-type (beta) globin forms |
| Platelets | Transfusions for critical thrombocytopenia | Handpicking ES sacs with 2-step stroma coculture or HB method with 1-step stroma coculture | Potential for alleviating supply shortages due to high demand and limited shelf-life | Reliance on stroma and inefficiency/poor yield in MK to platelet differentiation step |
| Dendritic cells | Antigen-specific vaccines for cancer or HIV | EBs, serum- and stroma-free culture conditions | Cost-effective off-the-shelf potential; stimulates antigen- specific T-cell response | Animal models needed to test in vivo efficacy; may cause undesired side effects |
| Natural killer cells | Natural or antibody-assisted anticancer cytotoxicity | EBs with 2-step stroma-coculture and sorting of rare CD34+/CD45+ cells | Animal models suggest hES-derived NKs are highly effective | Reliance on 2 steps of stroma coculture; need for sorting may hinder clinical scaleup |
| T cells | antigen-specific anticancer or anti-HIV adoptive cell transfer | handpicking hematopoietic zones and 2-step stroma coculture including delta ligand expression | Cost-effective off-the-shelf therapeutic potential | Not efficient, needs further study; complex biology and high in vivo risks |
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