Abstract
Adult stem cell therapy is efficiently applied to severe skin burn patients but with some important limitations. A major challenge remains with regards to the maintenance of the stem cell’s self-renewal and pluripotency ex vivo. Human embryonic stem (ES) cells that are derived from the inner cell mass of the developing blastocyst were successfully isolated for the first time in 1998. These cells can be passaged in culture as undifferentiated pluripotent colonies and may also enter lineage-specific differentiation under the appropriate signals. Thus, human ES cells are considered to be a promising source for future regenerative medicine. Herein, we review the most recent advances and achievements as well as important challenges and obstacles that must be resolved before using ES cells for regenerative medicine of cutaneous and corneal epithelium. Recently, ES cells have been successfully differentiated into pure progenitor cell populations of epidermal lineage but future attempts are still required for manipulating these cells into their correct functionality in vivo.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Monica Ouzas-Persat for editorial assistance.
Financial & competing interests disclosure
This work was supported by INSERM ‘Poste vert’ and short term EMBO fellowships for R Shalom-Feuerstein, the Sixth EEC Framework Program within the EPISTEM project (LSHB-CT-2005-019067), the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche ‘projet blanc’ and the Institut National Contre le Cancer (INCa). The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.