The ethical debate surrounding human pluripotent stem (PS) cell research is mainly due to use of human embryonic stem (ES) cells. It has been suggested by many that human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells would end the debate due to their non-embryonic origin. This review examines the ethical issues surrounding the use of iPS cells and their ES cell counterparts, and argues that while iPS ce...

Due to their pluripotency and growth capability, there are great expectations for human embryonic stem cells, both as a resource for functional studies of early human development and as a renewable source of cells for use in regenerative medicine and transplantation. However, to bring human embryonic stem cells into clinical applications, their cell surface antigen expression and its chemical s...

Mouse embryonic stem cells are continuous cell lines derived directly from the fetal founder tissue of the preimplantation embryo. They can be expanded in culture while retaining the functional attributes of pluripotent early embryo cells. In particular, they can participate fully in fetal development when reintroduced into the embryo. The capacity for multilineage differentiation is reproduced...

The human embryonic stem cell line, KthES11, is derived from a normal healthy blastocyst donated for clinical research. inner mass (ICM) was isolated using mechanical dissection and plated on laminin fragments. Cell line derivation, its propagation storage were performed without feeders in an animal product-free environment according to current Good Manufacturing Practice (cGMP) standards. KthE...

The discovery of an alternative method of producing induced human stem cells will affect the ethical evaluation of human embryonic stem cell research On 20 November 2007 two groups of researchers announced that they had independently managed to produce induced Pluripotent Cells (iPC) from human adult (ie not embryonic or foetal) somatic cells. 2 The two groups used slightly different procedures...