Human embryonic stem cells: preclinical perspectives
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BioMed Central
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Human embryonic stem cells: preclinical perspectives Kaushik Dilip Deb* and Kanchan Sarda Address: Embryonic Stem Cell Program, Manipal Institute of Regenerative Medicine, #10 Service Road, Domlur, Bangalore 560071, India Email: Kaushik Dilip Deb* - [email protected]; Kanchan Sarda - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 29 January 2008 Journal of Translational Medicine 2008, 6:7
doi:10.1186/1479-5876-6-7
Received: 1 November 2007 Accepted: 29 January 2008
This article is available from: http://www.translational-medicine.com/content/6/1/7 © 2008 Deb and Sarda; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) have been extensively discussed in public and scientific communities for their potential in treating diseases and injuries. However, not much has been achieved in turning them into safe therapeutic agents. The hurdles in transforming hESCs to therapies start right with the way these cells are derived and maintained in the laboratory, and goes up-to clinical complications related to need for patient specific cell lines, gender specific aspects, age of the cells, and several post transplantation uncertainties. The different types of cells derived through directed differentiation of hESC and used successfully in animal disease and injury models are described briefly. This review gives a brief outlook on the present and the future of hESC based therapies, and talks about the technological advances required for a safe transition from laboratory to clinic.
1. Introduction Biomedical research using embryonic stem cells (ESC) is a very promising area for the investigation of the possibilities of developing newer cell replacement therapies (CRTs). Diseases and disorders which have no therapy or at best partially effective ones mainly attract the pursuit of ESC research. The first ESC line was established from mouse embryos in 1981 [1], following a method virtually identical to rabbit models used by Cole RJ et al., [2] about 30 years earlier. These ESCs have been used for introducing specific gene modifications in mice. Sir Martin Evans has recently been honored with the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine (2007) for his contribution towards development of animal models of disease through ESC mediated gene targeting. Human embryonic stem cells were first derived by Thompson's group in 1998 [3] and are usually derived from the inner cell mass (ICM) of blastocyst stage embryos that are left over after in vitro fertilization (IVF) and after embryo donations [4]. The derivation of hESCs have opened up huge possibilities for
regeneration and repair of organs of tissues and thus been envisioned as therapeutic agents. "Self-renewal" i.e., the ability to
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