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.
Highlights
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)
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]
This review presents a generalized opinion and outlook on the alternative strategies required to develop effective and novel Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) based therapies
Summary
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). 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. "Self-renewal" i.e., the ability to undergo indefinite selfrenewing and symmetric cell divisions to maintain the population, and "pluripotency" which indicates their ability to differentiate into any of the 200 different known cell types (of ectoderm, endoderm, mesoderm and trophectoderm lineages); are the two hallmarks of these cells [5] Though these are the key properties of the hESCs, yet they are not a property of the ICM in vivo and must be a characteristic adopted by the cells during their initial outgrowth in the culture. ESC lines have been established from single cell biopsies of a developing embryo [8,9] Such advances if successfully reproduced in human, could possibly demolish the ethical objections related to destroying a potential life that has haunted the field for many years. This review presents a generalized opinion and outlook on the alternative strategies required to develop effective and novel hESCs based therapies
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