Regenerative Medicine

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Adult or somatic stem cells exist throughout the body after embryonic development and are found inside of different types of tissue. These stem cells have been found in tissues such as the brain, bone marrow, blood, blood vessels, skeletal muscles, skin, and the liver. They remain in a quiescent or non-dividing state for years until activated by disease or tissue injury.

Adult stem cells can divide or self-renew indefinitely, enabling them to generate a range of cell types from the originating organ or even regenerate the entire original organ. It is generally thought that adult stem cells are limited in their ability to differentiate based on their tissue of origin, but there is some evidence to suggest that they can differentiate to become other cell types. 7

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Embryonic stem cells are derived from a four- or five-day-old human embryo that is in the blastocyst phase of development. Embryonic stem cells are derived from a four- or five-day-old human embryo that is in the blastocyst phase of dnt. The embryos are usually extras that have been created in IVF (in vitro fertilization) clinics where several eggs are fertilized in a test tube, but only one is implanted into a woman. 8

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The current study directly fused adult skin cells with existing human embryonic stem cells, so no human eggs were involved. Although the fused cells still contained the genetic material, or DNA, from both of the two cells used (adult skin cells and embryonic stem cells), they behaved very much like embryonic stem cells. The fused cells could generate many different cell types of the body, including brain cells, hair cells, skeletal muscle and intestine and also expressed many genes that are characteristic of embryonic stem cells. 9