BioCentury
ARTICLE | Tools & Techniques

Next steps for pluripotent iPS cells

September 3, 2009 7:00 AM UTC

Induced pluripotent stem cells produced by three separate groups have now passed the most stringent functional test of pluripotency-producing mice from reprogrammed fibroblasts-and thus could be viable alternatives to human embryonic stem cells.1-3 The next hurdles include producing and selecting induced pluripotent stem cells with the best developmental potential and figuring out ways to coax them to differentiate into clinically useful effector cells.

In previous attempts to generate mice from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) cells, the embryos never got past late-stage development, perhaps because the iPS cells were not truly pluripotent...