Recent progress on tissue-resident adult stem cell biology and their therapeutic implications.

Recent progress in the field of the stem cell research has given new hopes to treat and even cure diverse degenerative disorders and incurable diseases in human. Particularly, the identification of a rare population of adult stem cells in the most tissues/organs in human has emerged as an attractive source of multipotent stem/progenitor cells for cell replacement-based therapies and tissue engineering in regenerative medicine. The tissue-resident adult stem/progenitor cells offer the possibility to stimulate their in vivo differentiation or to use their ex vivo expanded progenies for cell replacement-based therapies with multiple applications in human. Among the human diseases that could be treated by the stem cell-based therapies, there are hematopoietic and immune disorders, multiple degenerative disorders, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, type 1 or 2 diabetes mellitus as well as eye, liver, lung, skin and cardiovascular disorders and aggressive and metastatic cancers. In addition, the genetically-modified adult stem/progenitor cells could also be used as delivery system for expressing the therapeutic molecules in specific damaged areas of different tissues. Recent advances in cancer stem/progenitor cell research also offer the possibility to targeting these undifferentiated and malignant cells that provide critical functions in cancer initiation and progression and disease relapse for treating the patients diagnosed with the advanced and metastatic cancers which remain incurable in the clinics with the current therapies.