Salk scientists and colleagues have proposed new molecular criteria for judging just how close any line of laboratory-generated stem cells comes to mimicking embryonic cells seen in the very earliest stages of human development, known as naïve stem cells.
The tests found that no current protocols lead to truly naïve stem cells, but the guidelines may help researchers achieve that goal by pointing out where each current method falls short. Generating naïve stem cells would be a boon to both basic research and to medical applications of stem cells, such as growing tissue for organ replacement.
