抄録
In addition to infectious diseases, life-style related diseases become a more common reason for medication of elderly people than ever. Dysfunction of organs is an underlying cause of these diseases. Progressive aging of society urges us to find cures for this type of diseases. Taking advantage of versatile differentiation potentials in stem cells, researchers are attempting a functional restoration of damaged tissues and/or organs. Laser technology has provided such a powerful tool for the study of hematopoietic stem cells at a single-cell level as fluorescence activated cell sorter (FACS). However, many unanswered questions remain for understanding how growth and differentiation of stem cells are regulated and can be manipulated. Taking cartilage formation and repair by mesenchymal stem cells as a model, we explore possible applications of laser technology for the study of tissue stem cells at a single-cell level.
