Chapter One
Chair's introduction
John Gearhart
Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore,
MD21287, USA
In my introduction I would like to frame some of the questions that we will be
addressing over the next several days. Some of these are obvious, but I hope that
out of this meeting we will synthesize some new ones.
Clearly, we would like to know what stem cells are, and how we can define them
functionally and molecularly. What are their properties? What is this entity known
as 'stemness' that has now appeared in the literature? Are we talking about
epigenetics or chromatin structure? All of these are likely to be involved. What
are the sources of stem cells? In fetal tissues, embryonic tissues, adult tissues, how
do we recognize, isolate, characterize and grow them? These are all issues that will
be central to our discussions over the next three days. Most importantly, we are
concerned about how we can control these cells in the laboratory. How do we
get them to do the things that we want them to do, such as differentiating into
specific cell types with high efficiency? What strategies are currently used and
how successful are these? In grafts, can we get stem cells or their derivatives to do
what we want th ... read full excerpt from Stem Cells: Nuclear Reprogramming and Therapeutic Applications, Number 265 ebook
