Stem cells and differentiation--a synoptic review of patents granted since 2009.
BACKGROUND
Innovations in human pluripotent stem cell research and their application in therapeutics have seen a giant leap in the past decade. Patent applications related to human pluripotent stem cell generation, culture and differentiation show an ever-increasing trend worldwide with hundreds of patents being applied for every year. With the turn of the second decade in stem cell patenting, a review of the latest patents issued will be significant.


METHODS
The growing need in healthcare sector has revolutionized stem cell application in clinical therapeutics by extending in unprecedented dimensions. With the potential of being able to differentiate into any desired adult cell lineage, human pluripotent stem cells find a wide range of applicability in clinical as well as cosmetic therapy. Moreover, the recent innovation of isolating a disease-specific pluripotent stem cell has opened new horizons to stem cell application in cell therapy. This review gives an overview of significant international patents granted on innovations in human pluripotent stem cell differentiation methodologies between 2009 and 2014.


CONCLUSIONS
The discovery of human pluripotent stem cells and their immense potential in clinical therapeutics has increasingly channeled scientific research in their orientation. Although being widely used to fathom human physiology, the trend in stem cell application is slowly shifting toward disease-modeling, drug safety evaluation and toxicity-testing. And in order to probe those unexplored realms of stem cell applications, a unified approach from the scientific community is imperative.
University of Cologne, Institute of Neurophysiology and Center for Molecular Medicine Cologne (CMMC), Center of Physiology and Pathophysiology , Robert-Koch-Str 39, 50931, Cologne , Germany +49 0 221 478 7373 ; +49 0 221 478 6965 ; a.sachinidis@uni-koeln.de.
Poornima
P
Sureshkumar
Sureshkumar Perumal
SP
Srinivasan
Karthick
K
Natarajan
John Antonydas
JA
Gaspar
Jürgen
J
Hescheler
Agapios
A
Sachinidis
D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D018929:Cell Culture Techniques; D002454:Cell Differentiation / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D010330:Patents as Topic; D039904:Pluripotent Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology*; D033581:Stem Cell Transplantation / Q000379:methods*; D018675:Toxicity Tests / Q000379:methods
alternative testing strategies; cellular therapy; differentiation; human embryonic stem cells; human induced pluripotent stem cells