Two properties are generally considered to define a stem cell, the capacity for long-term self-renewal without senescence and pluripotency, the ability to differentiate into one or more specialized cell types. This article reviews the current status of ES cell research, with particular emphasis on progress towards the development of therapies for human disease. 2000), finally making regenerative medicine and tissue engineering a real possibility for the future treatment of human disease. Human ES cells were eventually derived in 1998 ( Thomson et al. This would provide a radical new approach to the treatment of a wide variety of diseases where organ damage or dysfunction exceeds the body's capability for natural repair. If ES cells could be derived from human blastocysts, their capacity for multilineage differentiation might be exploited for cell-based therapies in which virtually any tissue or cell type could be produced ‘to order’ in the laboratory. However, it also promised something else. The initial isolation of murine ES cell lines in 1981 heralded a major breakthrough for developmental biology as it provided a simple model system to study the basic processes of early embryonic development and cellular differentiation. In vitro, murine ES cells can be propagated indefinitely in the undifferentiated state, but retain the capacity to differentiate to all mature somatic phenotypes when induced by the appropriate signals. ES cells have since been shown to contribute to all cell lineages, including the germ line, when incorporated into chimeras with intact mouse embryos ( Bradley et al. Murine embryonic stem (ES) cells were first described over 20 years ago, when they were isolated from the inner cell mass of the developing blastocyst and grown in vitro ( Evans & Kaufman 1981 Martin 1981).
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