Isolation, Culture, and Functional Characterization of Human Embryonic Stem Cells: Current Trends and Challenges

Table 1

Advantages and disadvantages of inner cell mass (ICM) isolation from human embryos.

Techniques to obtain ICM from human embryos	Advantages	Disadvantages
Mechanical dissection	Mechanical isolation of the ICM proved to be an effective way to derive new hESC lines. The technique is fast and does not require xeno-components	Very laborious and time consuming
Laser dissection	Laser-assisted biopsy is also the most promising technique for xeno-free isolation of the ICM	Expensive
Immunosurgery procedure	High rate of ICM isolation	Immunosurgery procedure requires culture media containing guinea pig serum, which is not suitable for the generation of clinical-grade hESC lines
Microdissection	Easy method to isolate ICM	Poor success rate
Minimized trophoblast cell proliferation (MTP)	To derive hESCs from normal, abnormal, and frozen and thawed embryos	Only 50% success