Tour d’horizon des lignées de cellules souches pluripotentes

More than 20 years ago, the finding of a population of cells with the ability of self-renewal and differentiation inside teratocarcinomas (embryonic carcinoma cells) would allow their direct derivation from preimplantation embryos (embryonic stem cells, ESC). The phenomenal pluripotency properties of those cells and the therapeutical potential of their human counterparts triggered a massive interest from the scientific community. The research on the field of pluripotent stem cells improved a lot and many ES-like pluripotent stem cells of several embryonic and adult sources were described. Next step has been the reprogramming of terminally differentiated cells into embryonic cells, with the aim to produce patient-specific stem cells. The recent breakthrough has been the in vitro reprogramming of adult cells into ES cell-like cells named induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC), using four transcription factors (Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, c-Myc). Even though some challenges remain, we are now one step closer to the eventuality to use these cells for clinical purposes. In this review we propose to analyse the several pluripotent stem cells existing today.