Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are a novel stem cell population derived from human somatic cells through reprogramming using a set of transcription factors. These iPS cells were shown to share the characteristics of embryonic stem cells, including the ability to give rise to differentiated cells of every tissue type of the body. In the shorter term, iPS cells will be useful for creating p...

Human disease animal models are absolutely invaluable tools for our understanding of mechanisms involved in both physiological and pathological processes. By studying various genetic abnormalities in these organisms we can get a better insight into potential candidate genes responsible for human disease development. To this point a mouse represents one of the most used and convenient species fo...

In addition to its antioxidant effect, Vitamin E or α–tocopherol is suggested to enhance remyelination in the animal model of non-inflammatory demyelination. In this study, the possible proliferative effect of vitamin E on human- induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neural progenitors (hiPS-NPs) and the underlying mechanisms were investigated in vitro. NPs were induced from iPS cells via 3 ste...

The era of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells carries with it the promise of virtually unlimited sources of autologous cells for regenerative medicine. However, efficiently differentiating iPS cells into fully functional mature cell types remains challenging. A new study reporting the formation of fully functional platelets from human iPS (hiPS) cells improves upon recent efforts to generate ...

Introduction: The native inability of nervous system to regenerate, encourage researchers to consider neural tissue engineering as a potential treatment for spinal cord injuries. Considering the suitable characteristics of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) for tissue regeneration applications, in this study we investigated the adhesion, viability and proliferation of neural progenitors (de...

The recent discovery that it is possible to directly reprogramme somatic cells to an embryonic stem (ES) cell-like pluripotent state, by retroviral transduction of just four genes (Oct3/4, Sox2, c-Myc and Klf4), represents a major breakthrough in stem cell research. The reprogrammed cells, known as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, possess many of the properties of ES cells, and represent o...

The recent description of somatic cell reprogramming to an embryonic stem (ES) cell-like phenotype, termed induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell technology, presents an exciting potential venue toward cell-based therapeutics and disease models for neurodegenerative disorders. Two recent studies (Dimos et al. and Ebert et al.) describe the initial characterization of neurodegenerative disease pati...

KISCOi001-A is a healthy feeder-free and fully characterized human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell line cultured under xeno-free defined conditions. The generated from normal foreskin fibroblasts with non-integrating episomal plasmid vectors encoding OCT4, SOX2, KLF4, NANOG, LIN28, nontransforming L-MYC dominant negative p53. iPS cells are transgene-free their pluripotency confirmed by the ...

Stem cell science has undergone major paradigmatic and technological transformations following the successes made in reprogramming mature cells to become pluripotent stem cells; a process which is still under way. This article in a series of articles about bio-objects (1) discusses stem cell science and how the question of ethical panacea can be elaborated in the case of induced pluripotent ste...

Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS) technology appears to be a general strategy to generate pluripotent stem cells from any given mammalian species. So far, iPS cells have been reported for mouse, human, rat, and monkey. These four species have also established embryonic stem cell (ESC) lines that serve as the gold standard for pluripotency comparisons. Attempts have been made to generate porci...