Human embryonic stem cell culture : practical problems in current techniques and future approaches

Abstract

Since the first successful derivation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) from pre-implantation blastocyst-stage embryos in 1998, there has been an increasing interest in the potential applications of these cells in the fields of regenerative medicine, basic developmental biology research and in vitro pharmacological and cytotoxic screening. However, before the astonishing potentialities of the hESCs can come to fruition, a number of technical issues related to the current stem cell in vitro culturing system and procedure must be resolved.