Stem cells and regenerative medicine

Development of cell therapies and bioengineering approaches has rapidly progressed over the past decade. This chapter will explore the opportunities and emerging challenges of stem cell-based therapies and regenerative medicine. Stem cells and regenerative medicine are part of an ongoing process of study, research, and application. The recent years have witnessed major achievements and results. The overall increased interest in stem cell is due to their specific biological nature and their potential that has allowed a better understanding of aging and degenerative diseases. The plasticity is the most important feature in stem cell-based therapy. The conventional definition describes stem cells as undifferentiated progenitor cells that under specific biomolecular stimuli via the differentiation pathway can produce different cell phenotypes. The “stemness” per se indicates the capacity of stem cells self-renewal ab libitum, an almost incessantly capability of self-proliferation. According to a broad acceptance, scientists have categorized the stem cells based on their differentiation potential as totipotent, pluripotent, multipotent, oligopotent, and unipotent. In this brief chapter, authors aimed to classify the great variety of stem cells, including the induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSs), to describe the mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) from different tissues, to highlight the incredible uniqueness of MSC constructs among different phenotypes, and to trigger the readers’ interest toward these strategic cell types with some useful insights to medical aspects.