Viable Skin Cells Prove Difficult to Derive from Embryonic Stem Cells

Howard Green--who created the technique for culturing sheets of skin in vitro for transplant--and his colleagues at Harvard University set out to turn embryonic stem cells into keratinocytes and then isolate them. Unfortunately, it proved difficult to coax the stem cells to become skin cells in the first place. And those that did convert, Green says, grew poorly compared to donor skin cells.