About:
- Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are adult cells that have been genetically reprogrammed to an embryonic stem cell–like state by being forced to express genes and factors important for maintaining the defining properties of embryonic stem cells.
- Although these cells meet the defining criteria for pluripotent stem cells, it is not known if iPSCs and embryonic stem cells differ in clinically significant ways.
- Methods: Viruses are currently used to introduce the reprogramming factors into adult cells. Researchers are currently investigating non-viral delivery strategies.
- Timeline: Mouse iPSCs were first reported in 2006, and human iPSCs were first reported in late 2007.
- Significance/Application:
- Although additional research is needed, iPSCs are already useful tools for drug development and modelling of diseases, and scientists hope to use them in transplantation medicine.
- In any case, this breakthrough discovery has created a powerful new way to "de-differentiate" cells whose developmental fates had been previously assumed to be determined.
Recent Development in Japan:
- The team will transplant two million iPS cells into the spines of the patients, who will be monitored for a year.
- The trial, expected to begin later this year, will initially focus on four patients who suffered their injuries just 14 to 28 days beforehand.
- The announcement comes after researchers in Kyoto said in November, they had transplanted iPS cells into the brain of a patient in a bid to cure Parkinson’s disease (a chronic, degenerative neurological disorder that affects the body’s motor system, often causing shaking and other difficulties in movement).
