The 2013 special issue on stem cell biology

Abstract

Stem cells hold the remarkable capacity of self-renewal and differentiation into more specialized cell lineages, and thus constitute a promising resource in regenerative medicine for the generation of appropriate cell types in cell replacement therapy. Stem cell research, accordingly, has become a highly vigorous and rapidly evolving field in life sciences, highlighted by the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to Shinya Yamanaka and John Gurdon, for their ground-breaking works in reprogramming cell fates1. As a general interest life science journal, Cell Research has enjoyed a phase of rapid growth in the past several years, as shown by the dramatic improvement in the scientific quality of papers published in the journal as wells as its broadening impact within the scientific community. Along the way, the field of stem cell biology has naturally become an important research area covered by papers published in Cell Research2. For instance, in the past year of 2012, Cell Research has published a number of important papers related to the stem cell field, covering diverse aspects and topics such as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells3,4,5,6,7, mechanistic studies of pluripotency and differentiation8,9,10,11, modeling of human diseases using stem cell-based systems6,12, direct reprogramming of somatic cells to other cell types without passing through an pluripotent intermediate13,14,15,16, as well as neural crest stem cells17 and cancer stem cells18,19,20.