Engineered Embryonic Stem Cells for Regnerative Medicine

Abstract:
Adult, fetal as well as embryonic stem cells are currently one of the most promising subjects of biomedical research. Besides advancing the basic understanding of human development and cellular differentiation processes, stem cells hold the unique potential for novel therapies of degenerative diseases such as ischemia of the heart, Parkinson’s diabetes, and certain tumours. In particular, because of their ability to reproduce the embryological differentiation of nearly all different cellular phenotypes, the pluripotent embryonic stem (ES) cells represent an ideal tool to study processes of embryogenesis under in vitro conditions, the signalling cascades and genes involved in the functional development (functional genomics) as well as to provide a new source for building up physiological screening systems and for usage in cellular replacement therapies.