Recent advances in stem cell biology have transformed the understanding of cell physiology and developmental biology such that it can now play a more prominent role in the clinical application of stem cell and regenerative medicine. Success in the generation of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) as well as related emerging technology on the iPS platform provide great promise in the deve...

Cardiomyocytes are terminally differentiated cells with limited regenerative capacity in the adult heart, making cell replacement therapy an attractive option to repair injured hearts. Embryonic stem (ES) cells and induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are pluripotent and capable of infinite expansion in vitro, implicating them as ideal cell types for cell replacement therapy. During the past se...

Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS) technology has enriched the armamentarium of regenerative medicine by introducing autologous pluripotent progenitor pools bioengineered from ordinary somatic tissue. Through nuclear reprogramming, patient-specific iPS cells have been derived and validated. Optimizing iPS-based methodology will ensure robust applications across discovery science, offering oppo...

The developmental potential of human pluripotent stem cells suggests that they can produce disease-relevant cell types for biomedical research. However, substantial variation has been reported among pluripotent cell lines, which could affect their utility and clinical safety. Such cell-line-specific differences must be better understood before one can confidently use embryonic stem (ES) or indu...

The field of regenerative medicine research is rapidly expanding. One area of interest to equine researchers is the possibility of isolating or generating pluripotent cells, capable of producing differentiated cell types derived from all 3 primary germ layers. Reports of equine embryonic stem-like (ES) cell isolation can be found in the literature. Other groups are working to produce equine-ind...

On 2 December 2007, Science published a report on creating human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from human somatic cells: ?Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Lines Derived from Human Somatic Cells.? This report came from a team of Madison, Wisconsin scientists: Junying Yu [5], Maxim A. Vodyanik, Kim Smuga-Otto, Jessica Antosiewicz-Bourget, Jennifer L. Frane, Shulan Tian, Jeff Nie, Gudrun A. Jo...

Domesticated ungulate pluripotent embryonic stem (ES) cell lines would be useful for generating precise gene-modified animals. To date, many efforts have been made to establish domesticated ungulate pluripotent ES cells from early embryos without success. Here, we report the generation of porcine-induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells using drug-inducible expression of defined factors. We showed ...

The reprogramming of adult cells to a pluripotent state resembling embryonic stem (ES) cells is one of the most exciting advances in stem cell biology in the last decade. These induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells offer the potential for autologous regenerative therapies, new models to understand disease, and systems for drug discovery. Little is known, however, about the ability of iPS cells t...

s:1202:"It is a truly amazing time to developmental biology. During recent decades, three important breakthroughs have been developed: (i) isolation of stem cells from embryo, (ii) animal cloning by nuclear transfer (NT), and (iii) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS). Considering these three approaches of "Cellular Reprogramming", it seems that the required elements for cell therapy now ex...

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology involves the generation of pluripotent stem cells from adult somatic cells by the exogenous expression of specific reprogramming factors (see Box). This technology opened the door for us to access a robust platform demonstrating in vitro cellular reprogramming from certain somatic cells to pluripotent status. Recently, Cahan and Daley conducted a b...