| Abstract: |
The central nervous system (CNS) has been proposed as one of the prime targets for pluripotent stem (PS) cell-based therapies, due to early successes in directing PS cell towards neural fates, due to the experience with fetal tissue transplantation in neurodegenerative diseases, and due to the devastating nature of many CNS diseases which often lack efficient alternative treatments. Some of the most striking advantages of embryonic stem cells as compared with any other cell type are: extensive self-renewal capacity and differentiation potential, access to the earliest stages of neural development, and ease of inducing stable genetic manipulations. The development of protocols that allow the directed differentiation from embryonic stem (ES) and induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells to specific neural fates provides an essential basis for all PS cell-based approaches in neural repair. Over the last few years, directed differentiation protocols have rapidly progressed and neural induction is now a routine procedure for studies in both mouse and human PS cells. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. |
