Source: University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Date: April 7, 2011
Summary:
PHILADELPHIA - Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have devised a totally new and far more efficient way of generating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), immature cells that are able to develop into several different types of cells or tissues in the body. The researchers used fibroblast cells, which are easily obtained from skin biopsies, and could be used to generate patient-specific iPSCs for drug screening and tissue regeneration. The promise of this line of research is to one day efficiently generate patient-specific stem cells in order to study human disease as well as create a cellular "storehouse" to regenerate a person's own cells, for example heart or liver cells. Despite this promise, generation of iPSCs is hampered by low efficiency, especially when using human cells.
The study is published this week in Cell Stem Cell.
