Source: Children's Hospital Boston
Date: November 23, 2009
Summary:
Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells -- adult cells reprogrammed to look and function like versatile embryonic stem cells -- are of growing interest in medicine. They may provide a way to create different kinds of patient-matched stem cells as treatments for disease, while sidestepping many of the ethical questions surrounding stem cells created from embryos. However, the production of iPS cells is often imprecise, yielding many incompletely reprogrammed cells. Now, researchers at Children's Hospital Boston have developed a technique to help distinguish these cells from the desired pure stem cells.
Rather than relying on single markers to determine a stem cell's status, the new method uses a series of tests to identify the signature of a fully reprogrammed, completely undifferentiated pluripotent stem cell that has the potential to become any type of human cell. The series includes tests for fluorescent markers and tumor formation, as well as karyotyping (examination of the number and composition of a cell's chromosomes) and tests for other molecular characteristics of pluripotency.
The study was published Oct. 11 in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
