Generation of human inducible pluripotent stem cells (iPSC)

 http://www.nature.com/nprot/journal/v3/n7/full/npr... 

In this report, In-Hyun Park and colleagues explained how to generate human-induced pluripotent stem cells. This was an extremely important discovery that allows to obtain stem cells directly from adult cells, such as fibroblasts of our skin in a completely non-invasive mechanism. This discovery was pioneered by Prof. Shinya Yamanaka, who was awarded with the Nobel Prize in 2012. This patient-specific technology is extremely useful to replace cells and tissues damaged or create disease models to study potential therapeutic strategies.

The applications are many. Here are some of the most commonly used:

1) Disease modeling to investigate disease progression and how specific pathological events can be interrupted.

2) Regeneration of injured tissue such as spinal cord, lungs, hearth, liver.

3) Screening novel drugs that can benefit different pathological conditions currently lacking a specific cure.

Besides these pros. there are still some cons that need to be addressed or bypassed by the constant development of this technology. Some of them are:

- Potential risk of developing cells with carcinogenic potential

- Risk of undesired immune response

Due to these limitations associated with iPSC technology, a novel and promising alternative is to isolate extracellular vesicles (EVs) and use those as regenerative mediators to resolve disease progression.

As always, feel free to ask questions or further info on this topic!

Thank you!