Establishment and characterization of human embryonic stem cell lines, Turkey perspectives

Human embryonic stem cells (hESC), which are derived from the inner cell mass (ICM) of blastocyst stage embryos, are of great importance because of their unpredictable two unique features: their differentiation ability into all types of cells derived from three germ layers and their potentially unlimited capacity of self renewing with stable karyotype. These distinguished properties make hESC very promising cell source for regenerative medicine, tissue replacement therapies, and drug screening studies as well as genomics. However, due to the several technical problems, such as risk of teratoma formation, immune response, and unknown genetic pathways for lineage specific differentiation, and ethical drawbacks of their using in clinical treatments, hESC researches are still waiting to advance beyond to animal trials and drug studies. During the last decade, more than 300 new hESC lines have been derived and published by researchers worldwide. However, despite their similar well-known unique properties, recent studies reported that hESC lines have very individual properties and are differed from each other with regards to their differentiation ability and gene expression profiles. Therefore, all hESC lines should be characterized in detail and then registered in a stem cell bank for generating global database. In this report, the characteristic of hESC lines, which were established in Istanbul Memorial Hospital between 2003 and 2005, and derivation methods were described in detail to inform researchers and to facilitate new prospective cooperative studies.