胚胎干细胞(ESCs)是来源于哺乳动物囊胚内胚层细胞团的具有自我更新与发育多能性的一类细胞。因ESCs具有体外无限自我更新和三胚层多向分化的生物学特性,已经成为生命科学与再生医学领域的研究于重点和热点课题。经过30多年的研究与发展,ESCs已经广泛应用于基因修复、细胞替代治疗与组织工程学等多个领域。现就ESCs的生物学特性、基因调控机理、临床应用存在的问题及解决方案作一综述。 Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are a class of cells that are self-renewing and developing pluripotency derived from mammalian blastocyst endoderm cell clusters. Due to the biological characteristics of ESCs with infinite self-renewal in vitro and multi-directional differentiation of the three germ layers, ESCs have become the focus and hot topics in the fields of life sciences and regenerative medicine. After more than 30 years of research and development, ESCs have been widely used in many fields such as gene repair, cell replacement therapy and tissue engineering. Now on the biological characteristics of ESCs, gene regulation mechanism, clinical application of existing problems and solutions are reviewed.