Throughout the process of development and continuing into adulthood, stem cells function
as a reservoir of undifferentiated cell types, whose role is to underpin cell genesis in a
variety of tissues and organs. In the adult, they play an essential homeostatic role by
replacing differentiated tissue cells “worn off” by physiological turnover or lost to injury or
disease. As such, the discovery of such cells in the adult mammalian central nervous system
(CNS), an organ traditionally thought to have little or no regenerative capacity, was most …