Pluripotent stem cells, including embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), have the potential to generate all tissues of the human body. Human iPS cells which contain the genotype responsible for human disease also hold promise to develop novel patient-specific cell therapies and research models for inherited and acquired diseases.

Increasing amounts of evidence including some clinical trials have indicated ESCs and iPSCs as promising tools for clinical applications. However, much remains to be done involving the establishment of patient-specific iPSCs, maintenance of pluripotency, differentiation efficiency and stability, cellular functions, large scale expansion and GMP grade production, transplantation effect and long-term safety, HLA matching and immune rejection, drug screening, etc.

Thus, this Special Issue mainly calls for papers concerning the advances and progress of ESCs/iPSCs-based research in basic and clinical sciences, which aim to solve or improve the above problems. We invite authors to submit their work on maintenance, passage, and prediction of the differential direction, transplantation, quality control, practical techniques, and other related studies on ESCs and iPSCs. We also welcome review articles on these topics.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Advances and progress of ESCs and iPSCs
• Identification and characterization of the pluripotent of ESCs and iPSCs
• Maintenance and passage of ESCs and iPSCs with and without feeders
• Three-germ-layers induction and differential prediction of ESCs and iPSCs
• Stable and practical techniques to maintain for ESCs and iPSCs
• Embryoid body and three-dimensional culture as well large-scale cultural system
• ESCs and iPSCs-derived organoids and transplantation as well tissue reconstitution and regeneration
• Long term safety and tumorigenicity test with ESCs and iPSCs derived cells
• HLA matching and immune rejection of ESCs and iPSCs
• GMP level and quality control for clinical applications with ESCs and iPSCs
• Gene editing and mutation correction with CRISPR-Cas9 in ESCs and iPSCs
• Patient iPSCs and personalised medicine
• Disease modelling and drug screening with ESCs and iPSCs derived cells
• Single cell RNA assay in developmental biology and tissue regeneration with ESCs and iPSCs