Recently, regeneration medicine has received considerable attention in various fields and clinical applications have been attempted. There are approaches to regeneration medicine. The first approach is to transplant cells, especially various kinds of stem cells into the organs and tissues. The other approach is to promote the self-regenerative ability of cells. In many cases, however, cellular self-regenerative ability is limited. Growth factors are thought to play an important role in cellular proliferation, differentiation and regeneration, while the loss of growth factors contritutes to various diseases. In this report, the discovery of growth factors, examples of various growth factors and the application of growth factors to regeneration medicine are discussed.
