Although little is known regarding other xenogeneic products, such as porcine-derived trypsin that is used for detaching cultured cells, they are likely to carry similar biosafety risks. To avoid these risks, several culture methods have been proposed to establish somatic cells for clinical use; however, these protocols use human serum in place of FBS. The objective of our research was to design and evaluate a protocol to isolate, expand, and maintain clinically safe and efficient hDPCs by completely removing serum and replacing it with a novel mixture composed primarily of chemically defined materials. One of our goals is to establish a set of hDPC lines homozygous for human leukocyte antigen haplotypes. We previously reported that retroviral transduction of four transcription factors can reprogram DPCs into induced pluripotent stem cells that closely resemble embryonic stem cells. These DAPT findings suggested that a significant number of iPS cell lines homozygous for HLA haplotypes can be established from hDPCs, and are thus a valuable resource for regenerative medicine. HLA matched iPSCs are a potential source of patient-specific pluripotent stem cells that could be used to treat a number of human degenerative diseases without evoking immune rejection. The risk of oncogene activation and other genomic perturbations caused by retroviral integration during iPSC generation also needs to be addressed before ESCs and iPSCs can be safely used for clinical cell therapy. As it is an episomal vector, Sendai virus can be used avoid the risk of integration of the c-MYC oncogene into host genome during reprogramming. With this in mind, we incorporated Sendai virus into our novel method for derivation of iPSCs from hDPCs grown in defined chemical conditions. Stem cells are invaluable tools for screening, studying mechanisms of diseases, and can potentially serve as a resource for regenerative therapies. Given the wide clinical potential that DPCs possess, our objective was to design a new protocol for the isolation and maintenance of clinical grade cells using chemically defined reagents. This is since other traditional DPC culture protocols use xenogenic products such as FBS, which may impair or damage cell growth, or potentially damage cell lines due to endotoxins and mycoplasma contamination. Furthermore, use of 20% FBS in human mesenchymal stromal cell culture is known to elicit an immune reaction in patients. In this study, we successfully isolated hDPCs using the chemically defined medium, although their colony forming ability was lower than that observed with ‘conventional’ FBS containing medium. In early passage cultures, cells from individual donors grew exponentially in MSCGM-CD medium, although there was variation in growth rates of cells isolated from different donors; two out of three donor-derived cell lines grew slower than in MSCGM. Reduction in cell growth rate became apparent in MSCGM-CD medium in later passages.