Potential and challenges of pluripotent embryonic stem cells in treatment of human diseases

Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), including human induced and embryonic stem cells (hiPSCs and hESCs, respectively) possess substantial proliferative and differentiation capacity and thus have supreme potential for cell therapy and disease modeling advancement. After several years of delay for translating from bench to bedside, especially because of the tumorigenicity potential and inefficiencies in differentiation methods, the number of clinical trials testing hPSC derivatives in human diseases is rising through the world. There are several companies that develop new hPSC lines under the good manufacturing practice (GMP) regulation for development of new cell therapies for neurodegenerative disorders, ocular diseases, heart diseases, and etc. Interestingly, it is recently shown that hPSCs also have potential for development of global cancer vaccines because of the cellular and molecular propertieswhich share between these cells and cancer cells that could elicit anti-tumor responses in cancer vaccines. Overall, recent progress in application of hPSCs and their derivatives have created hopes and, of course, new challenges in advancement of regenerative medicine and drug development

Keywords:

Human pluripotent stem cells , Potential , Challenges , Human disease treatment