Source: Harvard University
Date: October 8, 2009
Summary:
A team of Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers has made a major advance toward producing induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, that are safe enough to use in treating diseases in patients. The chemical that the team used is a small molecule that members named RepSox in honor of another Boston team. It replaces Sox2 and cMyc, two of the four genes currently being used to reprogram adult skin cells into an embryonic-like state.
“This demonstrates that we’re halfway home, and remarkably we got halfway home with just one chemical,” said Kevin Eggan, an HSCI principal faculty member who is the senior author of the paper being published online today by the journal Cell Stem Cell.
