the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, e.g., cardiovascular disease, diabetes and neuronal degenerative disease, present a challenge to find more effective therapies. stem cell-based therapy, including embryonic, umbilical cord blood and adult stem cells provides a rational treatment tool for regenerative medicine and has the potential to revolutionize modern therapy. however, there are...

Human embryonic stem cells have unique value for regenerative medicine, as they are capable of differentiating into a broad variety of cell types. Therefore, defining the signalling pathways that control early cell fate decisions of pluripotent stem cells represents a major task. Moreover, modelling the early steps of embryonic development in vitro may provide the best approach to produce cell ...

differentiation is an epigenetic process which is installed by changes of transcriptional programs over successive cellular divisions. a number of studies have reported the effects of biochemical modifications of chromatin (dna and chromatin proteins) on the regulation of transcription. although, these studies are able to explain how transcription of a given gene is regulated (toward activation...

The stage-specific embryonic antigen 4 (SSEA4) is commonly used as a cell surface marker to identify the pluripotent human embryonic stem (ES) cells. Immunohistochemistry on human embryonic central nervous system revealed that SSEA4 is detectable in the early neuroepithelium, and its expression decreases as development proceeds. Flow cytometry analysis of forebrain-derived cells demonstrated th...

Stem cells have the properties of unlimited self renewal and differentiation into various cells or tissues. Stem cells can be divided into embryonic and adult stem cells. Embryonic stem cells can differentiate into all kinds of tissues or are pluripotent, whereas adult stem cells can differentiate into many but not all kinds of cells, and are multipotent. Hematopoietic stem cells have long been...

Human embryonic stem cell research has emerged as an important platform for the understanding and treatment of pediatric diseases. From its inception, however, it has raised ethical concerns based not on the use of stem cells themselves but on objections to the source of the cells--specifically, the destruction of preimplantation human embryos. Despite differences in public opinion on this issu...