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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Stuart Atkinson, Professor Majlinda LakoORCiD, Professor Lyle Armstrong
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The therapeutic potential of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) is vast, allowing disease modelling, drug discovery and testing and perhaps most importantly regenerative therapies. However, problems abound; techniques for cultivating self-renewing hESCs tend to give a heterogeneous population of self-renewing and partially differentiated cells and general include animal-derived products which can be cost-prohibitive for large scale production and effective lineage specific differentiation protocols also still remain relatively undefined and are inefficient in producing large amounts of cells for therapeutic use. Further, the mechanisms and signalling pathways which mediate pluripotency and differentiation are still to be fully appreciated. However, over the recent years, the development/discovery of a range of effective small molecule inhibitors/activators has had a huge impact in hESC biology. Large scale screening techniques, coupled with greater knowledge of the pathways involved, have generated pharmacological agents which can boost hESC pluripotency/self-renewal and survival and has allowed great increases in the efficiency of various differentiation protocols, while also aiding the delineation of several important signalling pathways. Within this review, we hope to describe the current uses of small molecule inhibitors/activators in hESC biology and their potential uses in the future
Author(s): Atkinson SP, Lako M, Armstrong L
Publication type: Review
Publication status: Published
Journal: British Journal of Pharmacology
Year: 2013
Volume: 169
Issue: 2
Pages: 269-289
Print publication date: 01/05/2013
Online publication date: 25/04/2013
Acceptance date: 18/03/2012
ISSN (print): 0007-1188
ISSN (electronic): 1476-5381
Publisher: The British Pharmacological Society
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1476-5381.2012.01978.x
DOI: 10.1111/j.1476-5381.2012.01978.x
PubMed id: 22515554
