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. 2013 Jun 4;1(1):5–17. doi: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2013.05.001

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© 2013 The Authors

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works License, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Derivation and Use of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells

Human ES cells (hESCs) and iPS cells (hiPSCs) have immediate applications in modeling disease, drug discovery, and safety pharmacology. Genetic or other correction provides the appropriate control cells for these studies. hESCs can be targeted genetically to create disease models and introduce different mutations on an isogenic background. Alternatively, disease-specific hESCs can be derived from embryos that are rejected after preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Longer-term applications are thought to be in cell transplantation therapy. The prototype human pluripotent stem cells are EC stem cells (hECs) derived from spontaneous teratocarcinomas. As in mice, pluripotent stem cells can also be derived from primordial germ cells in humans as human embryonic germ cells (hEGCs), but these have usually not become stable lines (data not shown).