ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:Epidermal stem cells as special stem cells of the skin not only plays an important role in maintaining the metabolism of skin, but also is closely related to wound repair, which are the basis for the occurrence and repair of skin and its appendages. Now, epidermal stem cells have been paid great attention on the research of gene therapy and celltherapy with its specific biological advantages. OBJECTIVE:To summarize the research status on features and clinical application of epidermal stem cells. METHODS:A computer-based online retrieval of CNKI, PubMed database and Google scholar was performed for searching papers about clinical application of epidermal stem cells using the keywords of“epidermal stem cells, stem cells division, stem cells culture, clinical application”in Chinese and English. Older theoretical perspectives and repetitive research were excluded. Finally, only 41 articles were included in result analysis. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Epidermal stem cells have the great potential of proliferation and multi-directional differentiation, and have important significances for large-area skin defects (burn and trauma), skin tissue engineering, and gene therapy. There are stil many problems that need to be solved, such as how to screen surface markers special for epidermal stem cells and how to induce skin differentiation of epidermal stem cells.