Humana Protocols for Adult Stem Cells: 621 (Methods in Molecular Biology, 621)

Although embryonic stem cells currently enjoy the public limelight and show great pr- ise for cell based medical therapies, it is the adult stem cells which are responsible for the body’s natural ability to fght disease, heal and recover, or fail and succumb to various maladies. The study of mammalian adult stem cells has surged recently, most likely from a maturation of stem cell studies in the classical developmental model organisms and in hematopoeisis. All the tissues of the body examined so far are generated and regenerated from stem cells, it has been an important frst step to adapt or devise new methods to identify and obtain these cells in quantity and purity for further study. Culture techniques have been optimized for managing the growth and differentiation of stem cells in vitro; as some stem cells are pluripotent, often the method is to guide the fate of such cells among the possible differentiation fates. Much of this work, and that in the classical model org- isms, has helped defne the aspects of the stem cell environment or niche that are crucial for both growth and differentiation, and these studies have moved in vivo at increasingly higher resolution. Importantly, the in vivo niche is a current target for bioengineering the matrix and signaling factors. Herein, we present methods for studying six types of mammalian stem cells, m- mary, neural, mesenchymal, endothelial, dendritic, and muscle.