Abstract: To investigate the effect of retinoic acid (RA),nerve growth factor (NGF),epidermal growth factor (EGF) and basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) on the differentiation and apoptosis of rhesus monkey embryonic stem (rES) cell line R366.4,rES cells were cultured in monolayer state in vitro,and the experiment resulted in:1)The percentage of differentiated rES cells increased along with the elongated duration of culture.2)The rES cells differentiated into heterogeneous somatic cells,whose proportions were at random,in the absence of exogenous growth factors.3)Single growth factor could promote progress of differentiation,and increased the proportion of one or several types of differentiated cells;neuron-like cells increased in the presence of RA or NGF,while endothelium-like cells and fibroblast-like cells increased in the presence of EGF and bFGF,respectively.4)During the differentiation of rES cells the early and the late apoptosis happened,and the apoptosis could be promoted by RA and NGF.The four growth factors have the potential to stimulate differentiation of rES cells in different ways.The ES cell differentiation induced by the growth factor may be species-specific.