INTRODUCTION Over the past decade the world has seen an unprecedented explosion in the field of stem cell research. Hardly a week passes by without an article in one of the main printed newspapers, describing a new breakthrough involving stem cells. Stem cell research...
To understand what a stem cell is, it is important to first understand what a stem cell is not. All the cells of the body, called somatic cells, are specialized cells that do one specific thing; they will never do anything else, and they do not proliferate. For...