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Chicken embryonic stem cells (cESCs) isolated from the egg at the stage X hold great promise for cell therapy, tissue engineering, pharmaceutical, and biotechnological applications. They are considered to be pluripotent cells with the capacity to self-renewal and differentiate into specialized cells. However, long-term maintenance of cESCs cannot be realized now, which impedes the establishment of cESC line and limits their applications. Therefore, the separation locations, isolation methods, and culture conditions especially the supplements and action mechanisms of cytokines, including leukemia inhibitory factor, fibroblast growth factor, transforming growth factor beta, bone morphogenic protein, and activin for cESCs in vitro, have been reviewed here. These defined strategies will contribute to identify the key mechanism on the self-renewal of cESCs, facilitate to optimize system that supports the derivation and longtime maintenance of cESCs, establish the cESC line, and develop the biobank of genetic resources in chicken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lineage reprogramming has become a potential strategy for therapy of cardiac diseases. Somatic cells can be directly converted into the induced cardiomyocytes (iCMs) without passing through an induced pluripotent stem cell stage; this strategy has some advantages such as directional differentiation and preferable security. However, there are still many challenges which need to be further studied, such as identification of safer induced factors, exploration of molecular mechanisms, improvement of the mature level of iCMs and so on. Therefore, the structures of key factors, including transcription factors, microRNAs (miRNAs), epigenetic regulators and small molecules and their functions in the cardiac development and lineage reprogramming, molecular mechanisms underlying lineage conversion, strategies for generating matured iCMs, and major challenges were reviewed to lay the foundation for further applications of iCMs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]