TITLE:
In Pursuit of Porcine Pluripotent Stem Cells for Autologous Cell Therapy
AUTHORS:
Vinod Verma, Ashish Mehta, Sanjay Pal, Manoj Kumar, Birbal Singh, Ashok Kumar, Sanjeev Gautam
KEYWORDS:
Porcine Model, Signaling Pathways, Stem Cells, Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, Pluripotency, Regenerative Medicine, Cell Therapy, Epigenetics
JOURNAL NAME:
Stem Cell Discovery,
Vol.4 No.4,
September
18,
2014
ABSTRACT: Treatments to repair the
human heart following regenerative diseases remain a challenge for medical
science. Unlike lower vertebrate species the human heart lacks a regenerative
pathway meaning that research has to be focused on cell transplantation.
Porcines (Sus scrofa) are excellent models for cardiovascular disease
and pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) generated from porcines will provide
important clinical insights for cardiac cell therapy. This could open a new
avenue of research into degenerative conditions as porcine is a more effective
human proxy to work with. However, bona
fide PSCs are currently available onlyin rodents (mouse, rat) and primates
(monkey, human). Attempts to derivepluripotent stem cells (PSCs) from porcine have been going on for
more than two decades with slow progress. Despite the fact that the porcine
stem cells are under increasing glare of publicity due to milestone achievements
in this area of research. Advances in stem cell technology, especially the
genetic engineering, innovative cell culturing and induced pluripotency to
generate stem cells has dramatically revolutionized the basic and applied
investigations and applications of porcine stem cells. This review attempts to
summarize the major signaling pathways involved in maintenance of pluripotency
and the state of the art conceptual and technical progress for generating bona
fide porcine PSCs.