Pluripotency and differentiation in embryos and stem cells - Pavia, 17-18 January 2008
Abstract
Each year many scientific meetings are held on stem cells to appraise the state of knowledge on their potency, differentiation and applications. So why did we hold another meeting? Because we thought one aspect was not adequately addressed in the others. When thinking of how our body is derived from a single fertilized egg, it is self-evident that the embryo is the 'mother' of all stem cells. This fact is probably overlooked because it is so remote (decades back in our lives!) and because embryonic stem cells do not exist as such in the embryo. However, this also tends to be ignored on purpose in many stem cell meetings because working on (human) embryos brings up substantial ethical concerns that bear on the scientific undertaking like nothing else. The origin of stem cells has become even more of a sensitive issue since the discovery in 2006 that embryonic stem (ES) cell-like cells can be generated in a petri dish straight from somatic cells by retrovirus-mediated transfer of selected genes. These new cells have been named 'induced pluripotent stem' (iPS) cells and have been obtained without any egg or embryo consumption (Takahashi and Yamanaka, 2006). This leads to the first topic of our meeting: natural and induced pluripotency...
Additional Information
© 2007 UBC Press. Received: 18 June 2008; Evaluated: 18 July 2008; Accepted: 25 August 2008; Published online: 4 September 2008. We would like to wholeheartedly thank the speakers for sharing their published as well as unpublished data. We tried to cite the work of other scientists as much as possible and we apologize to those whose work was not mentioned. We thank the moderators, Juan Aréchaga (Spain) and Gianna Milano (Italy), for steering and keeping the program on track. We are greatly indebted to the Fondazione Costa (Ivrea) and Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo (Pavia) for generously providing the financial support. We thank K. John McLaughlin for critically reading this report. We are obliged to Collegio Ghislieri and Collegio Borromeo for hosting this event. The assistance of Ms. Amy Pavlak and Mr. David Obridge with the editing and formatting of this report is appreciated. Finally, we would like to remember Anne McLaren – one of the authorities in germ and stem cell research – by dedicating this symposium to her person and science. We are sure Anne would have been pleased to join us.Attached Files
Published - ft801.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 94799
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190418-150055789
- Fondazione Costa (Ivrea)
- Fondazione IRCCS Policlinico San Matteo (Pavia)
- Created
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2019-04-18Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-16Created from EPrint's last_modified field