[Regenerative medicine: history and perspectives].

Regenerative medicine using stem cells is one of the most important topics today. Embryonic stem cells (ES cells) are useful in the studies of the differentiation of various cells or tissues for transplantation therapy, because of their pluripotency to differentiate into almost all types of cells in the body. However, it is controversial to use human ES cells, because it is necessary to sacrifice the life of human embryos for the establishment of these cells. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) generated from somatic cells of patients are one of the alternative sources of human pluripotent stem cells while avoiding ethical problems. Epigenetic studies using iPS cells may be valuable to find the way to control cell differentiation more effectively.