About the Authors

Seema Singh

Affiliation Center of Excellence in Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine Maine Medical Center Research Institute, Scarborough, Maine, United States of America

Arvind Dev

Affiliation Center of Excellence in Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine Maine Medical Center Research Institute, Scarborough, Maine, United States of America

Rakesh Verma

Affiliation Center of Excellence in Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine Maine Medical Center Research Institute, Scarborough, Maine, United States of America

Anamika Pradeep

Affiliation Center of Excellence in Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine Maine Medical Center Research Institute, Scarborough, Maine, United States of America

Pradeep Sathyanarayana

Affiliation Center of Excellence in Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine Maine Medical Center Research Institute, Scarborough, Maine, United States of America

Jennifer M. Green

Affiliation Affymax, Inc., Palo Alto, California, United States of America

Aishwarya Narayanan

Affiliation Strand Life Sciences, Hebbal, Bangalore, India

Don M. Wojchowski

wojchd@mmc.org

Affiliation Center of Excellence in Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine Maine Medical Center Research Institute, Scarborough, Maine, United States of America

Competing Interests

Dr. Green is Associate Director of Cell Biology at Affymax, and has interests in the commercialization of EPO mimetics. Dr. Green's interest in, and contributions to this study are academically based; and do not relate to patented or patent- pending materials, products under development, or marketed products. (In addition, the Wojchowski laboratory does not receive Affymax research funding). No other competing interests exist. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: SS AD RV AP PS JMG AN DMW. Performed the experiments: SS AD RV AP PS JMG AN DMW. Analyzed the data: SS AD RV AP PS JMG AN DMW. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: JMG AN DMW. Wrote the paper: SS RV JMG DMW.