Progenitor and Stem Cell Technologies and Therapies

Introduction

A. Atala,     Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, USA

The fields of primary progenitor and stem cells have evolved in often unpredictable paths, and advances have been numerous in just the last few years. In 1998 James Thomson published the first paper describing human embryonic stem cells (Thomson et al., 1998). So many advances have occurred in the decade since. It is, at times, hard to conceptualize just how accelerated these findings have been. At the time of Thomson's initial publication in 1998, it had been nearly two decades since embryonic stem cells in mice had been first described in two separate publications by Martin and Evans and Kaufman in 1981 (Evans and Kaufman, 1981, Martin, 1981). In contrast, Takahashi ...