The medical use of stem cells, cells with the ability to perpetuate themselves through self-renewal and to differentiate into a particular cell type through differentiation, is receiving extensive interest as they might regenerate damaged tissue under the right conditions[1]. This unique capacity could serve patients suffering from organ malfunction, cell deficiency, and/or neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease by replacing affected/deficient cells with healthy new cells[2].
Stem cells are unspecialized cells with an extraordinary ability to self-renew, capable of differentiating into one or more specialized cell types. When called into action following an injury, a stem cell self-renews – undergoes cell division and gives rise to one daughter stem cell and one progenitor cell. A progenitor cell is an intermediate cell type formed before it achieves a fully differentiated state. It is regarded as committed to differentiating along a particular cellular developmental pathway of stem cells:

Stem cell → Stem cell + Progenitor cell → Differentiated cell 

Based on their origin, stem cells are categorized either as embryonic stem cells (ESCs) or as postnatal stem cells/somatic stem cells/adult stem cells (ASCs).  They are characterized as totipotent (can generate all types of cells including germ cells (ESCs), pluripotent (can generate all types of cells except cells of the embryonic membrane), multipotent (can differentiate into more than one mature cell (MSC)), self-renewable (can divide without differentiation and create everlasting supply), and malleable stem cells (MSCs have plasticity and can undergo differentiation.

Among the types of differentiation are:

• Direct differentiation: specific type of cell in a special niche developed in a multistep unidirectional pathway;
• Transdifferentiation: direct conversion of one cell type to another different cell type;
• Dedifferentiation: unipotent stem cell becoming a multipotent one;
• Cell fusion: stem cell fusing with a somatic cell resulting in another lineage.[3]

Stem cell products Library

For your convenience, you can order a library of all of our Stem cell research related products. Make your personal library by cherry picking products of your interest from our comprehensive list (142 products), or order all together not to miss any. The libraries will be shipped as 10 mM solutions (in DMSO, 250 µL of each selected Axon Ligand™) on a 96-well microtiter plate with a clear map of its contents.

Simply download our comprehensive list of epigenetics products below (Microsoft Excel (.xls)), check the products to be included, and return your list to order the library of your preference.

Axon 5053 - Stem cell Library.xls

The pharmacological tools in this category could interact in any way with the complex cell differentiating processes involved in the transformation of an un-programmed stem cell into its destination cell type. Examples of biological targets of significance in stem cell research are:

Enzymes
AMPK	CDC42	CHK
CK	DNA methyltransferase	GSK-3
HHAT	HMTase	JAK
MEK	MPS1 Kinase	mTOR
PI3K	Porcupine	Rac
ROCK	TNKS	γ-Secretase
Receptors
BMP-ALK	FGFR	Smoothened (SMO)
TGF-βR
Ion Channels
Ca Channel
Signaling pathways
Hedgehog	TGF-β/SMAD	Wnt/β-Catenin
Transcription factors
AHR	STAT
Proteins
Aggrecan	β-Catenin

Related product categories: Stem cell differentiators, Stem cell inhibitor sets