HISTORY OF STEMCELLS

•The history of the stem cell research had a benign in 1878 the first attempts were made to fertilize mammalian eggs outside the body.
•1900’s European researchers realised that the various type of blood cells e.g white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets all came from a particular ‘stem cell’. However, it was not until 1963 that the first quantitative descriptions of the self-renewing activities of transplanted mouse bone marrow cells were documented by Canadian researchers Ernest A McCulloch and James E Till.
•1959 first animals made by in-vitro fertilization.
•1960 Teratocarcnomas determined to originate from embryonic germ cells in mice.
•1968 the first human egg is fertilized in vitro.
•1970 EC cells injected into mouse blastocysts make chimeric mice.
•1978 the first IVF baby is born in England.
•1981 Mouse ES cells are derived form the inner cell mass of blastocysts.
•1984-88 Pluripotent, clonal cells called embryonal carcinoma cells are developed. When exposed to retinoic acid these cells differentiate into neuron_like cells and other type cells.

•1984-1988 Pluripotent, clonal cells called embryonic carcinoma cells are developed. When exposed to retinoic acid these cell differentiate into neuron-like cells and other cell types.
•1989 A clonal line of human embryonal carcinoma cells is derived that yields tissues from all three promary germ layers. They have limited replicative and differentiative capacity
•1994 Human blastocysts are generated and the inner cell mass is maintained in culture. ES like cells form in the center and retain stem cell like morphology.
•1995-96 Non human primate ES cells are maintained in vitro fro the inner cells mass of monkeys. These cells are Pluripotent and differentiate normally into all three primary germ layers.
• 1998 James Thomson Es cells from the inner cells mass of normal human blastocysts are cultured and maintained normally for many passages.
•2000 scientist derive human ES cells from the inner cell mass of blastocysts. They proliferation in vitro for a long time and form all three germ layers and teratomas when injected into immune deficient mice.
•2001 As human ES cell lines are shared and new lines are derived, more research groups are focusing attention on the differentiation of cells in vitro. Many methods focus on making human tissues for transplantation.