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Stem Cells in Amniotic Fluid as New Tools to Study Human Genetic Diseases

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Abstract

In future, the characterization and isolation of different human stem cells will allow the detailed molecular investigation of cell differentiation processes and the establishment of new therapeutic concepts for a wide variety of diseases. Since the first successful isolation and cultivation of human embryonic stem cells about 10 years ago, their usage for research and therapy has been constrained by complex ethical consideration as well as by the risk of malignant development of undifferentiated embryonic stem cells after transplantation into the patient’s body. Adult stem cells are ethically acceptable and harbor a low risk of tumor development. However, their differentiation potential and their proliferative capacity are limited. About 4 years ago, the discovery of amniotic fluid stem cells, expressing Oct-4, a specific marker of pluripotent stem cells, and harboring a high proliferative capacity and multilineage differentiation potential, initiated a new and promising stem cell research field. Inbetween, amniotic fluid stem cells have been demonstrated to harbor the potential to differentiate into cells of all three embryonic germlayers. These stem cells do not form tumors in vivo and do not raise the ethical concerns associated with human embryonic stem cells. Further investigations will reveal whether amniotic fluid stem cells really represent an intermediate cell type with advantages over both, adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells. The approach to generate clonal amniotic fluid stem cell lines as new tools to investigate molecular and cell biological consequences of human natural occurring disease causing mutations is discussed.

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Acknowledgements

Experiments of MH’s laboratory discussed in this article were part of a project, which has been reviewed and accepted by the ethics commission of the Medical University of Vienna, Austria (project number: 036/2002). The current work of the group on human amniotic fluid stem cells is supported by the Research Training Network “Developing a stem cell based therapy to replace nephrons lost through reflux nephropathy” (http://www.kidstem.org) funded by the European Community as part of the Framework program 6 (FP6 036097-2). We apologize to those colleagues whose work is not cited due to space limitations or our inability to draw connections between elements of the primary literature.

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  1. Medical Genetics, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Medical University of Vienna, Währinger Gürtel 18-20, 1090, Vienna, Austria

    Nicol Siegel, Margit Rosner, Michaela Hanneder, Alessandro Valli & Markus Hengstschläger

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  1. Nicol Siegel
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  2. Margit Rosner
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Correspondence to Markus Hengstschläger.

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Siegel, N., Rosner, M., Hanneder, M. et al. Stem Cells in Amniotic Fluid as New Tools to Study Human Genetic Diseases. Stem Cell Rev 3, 256–264 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12015-007-9003-z

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