The Stem Cell Bioengineering and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory at IBB-BERG-IST aims at developing highly controlled bioreactor systems for the ex-vivo expansion of stem cells and their controlled differentiation into specific cell types, as well as their integration with advanced bioseparation and purification techniques. As stem cells are rare, their isolation and expansion/differentiation in vitro significantly increases the cell population available for Cellular and Gene therapy, Tissue Engineering, high- throughput drug screening and stem cell research. Human hematopoietic stem cells, human mesenchymal stem cells, as well as human and mouse pluripotent stem cells (both embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells) and neural stem cells are used as model systems.