Murine embryonic stem cells as a model for human embryonic stem-cell research

During several last decades mouse embryonic stem cell (mESC) were used as a model object for the research of human embryonic stem cells (hESC). The validity of such approach is still not finally proved. At the same time there is a large amount of literary data available, which gives evidences of many substantial differences between these two cell types. The analysis of the literature has shown that there are differences concerning the regulation of proliferation, self-renewal maintenance, and the regulation of differentiation of ESC. Thus, mESC can be considered as a model object for hESC studies only in some aspects of their biology. The alternative model objects, such as primate ESC, are also briefly discussed in this review.