Abstract: The problem is to produce functional liver cells usable in testing the metabolism and toxicity of a drug, from pluripotent stem cells. The solution includes a method for producing highly functional liver cells using pluripotent stem cells, comprising, from pluripotent stem cells, acquiring primitive endoderm derived from the pluripotent stem cells by a process involving steps (A) and (B), from the primitive endoderm, acquiring liver precursor cells by a process involving step (C), and, from the liver precursor cells, acquiring the highly functional liver cells by a process involving step (D): (A) culturing under serum-free and feeder-free conditions; (B) culturing in the presence of albumin and at least one kind of cytokine; (C) culturing in the presence of SHH or an SHH agonist and at least one kind of cytokine; and (D) culturing and maturing in the presence of at least one kind of cytokine.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method for subculturing primate embryonic stem cells, and a method for inducing differentiation of the same cell into a vascular endothelial cell and a blood cell. The present invention provides a method comprising culturing primate embryonic stem cells in a medium containing a protein component without using feeder cells and cytokines in a container coated with an extracellular matrix, detaching colonies of the resulting embryonic stem cells in the presence of a cytodetachment agent, and plating the colonies in the similar medium, and a method comprising culturing primate embryonic stem cells in a serum-containing or not containing medium in the presence of cytokine, adhesion-culturing the resulting embryoid body or embroyid body-analogous cellular aggregate in the presence of a cytokine to obtain specific precursor cells, and separating non-adherent cells and adherent cells from the specific precursor cells to obtain blood cells and vascular endothelial precursor cells.