Reproduction Abstracts

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) derived from the inner cell mass of the blastocyst, propagate by self-renewal and can give rise to all cells of the body. Thus, they are a useful model to investigate a range of degenerative disorders such as type 1 insulin-dependent diabetes, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. However, hESCs are notoriously difficult to maintain in culture as colonies have a propensity to spontaneously differentiate making it difficult to unifo...

The establishment of ES cells in domestic animals will help us to understand embryonic biology and improve the studies of regenerative medicine using stem cells. Among these domestic animal, pig can be particularly useful to study human diseases, because of similarities in size, immunology and physiology to human. In domestic animals including pig, however, authentic ES cells could not be derived from pre-implantation embryos. Although several attempts to establish ES cells ha...

The human endometrium undergoes >400 cycles of growth, differentiation and shedding during a woman’s reproductive years. Endometrial regeneration is likely mediated by stem/progenitor cells. Emerging evidence suggests that disorders associated with abnormal endometrial proliferation (endometriosis, endometrial cancer) may involve endometrial stem/progenitor cells. In human endometrium, colony forming units (CFU), side population (SP) cells and tissue reconstituting ce...