Why not use human adult stem cells instead of human embryonic stem cells in research?
A. Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent, which means they have the ability to form all cell types of the body. Adult stem cells, however, are generally limited to differentiating into cell types of their tissue of origin. However, there is now evidence to suggest that some adult stem cells, referred to as multipotent, may be able to create a limited number of specialised cell types. Large numbers of cells are needed for stem cell replacement therapies. While large numbers of embryonic stem cells can be grown relatively easily in culture, adult stem cells are rare in mature tissues and methods for growing them in cell culture have yet to be discovered.
