Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells : Next Generation Stem Cells to Clinical Applications

Regenerative medicine has been an emerging field that represents replacement of lost or damaged tissues in the human body through either cellular transplantation or endogenous repair. It has been considered that stem cells are the potential mediators that function as reservoir for repair and regeneration of damaged tissues, because of its ability of differentiation into many different lineages of specialized cells [1-3]. Recently, the discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) which have differentiation capacity into all kind of cells in the body, called pluripotency, encourages the synthesis of scientific principles and technology in applications in regenerative medicine. iPS cells can be achieved by reprogramming somatic cells using reprogramming factors and can undergo self-renewal as well as differentiate into all three germ layers [4,5]. The in vitro generation of pluripotent cells without the use of embryonic material has been rendered a more suitable source for regenerative medicine compared with nuclear transfer-embryonic stem cells (NT-ESC) [6,7] or somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) [8,9]. Moreover, the one of advantages of iPSC is to overcome immune rejection that occurs when one uses cells of an individual to generate pluripotent stem cells. These features make iPSC a useful tool for drug screening, the human disease model and cell therapy including autologous transplantation [3,10,11]. Thereby, since the initial report of mouse and human iPSCs by Takahashi and Yamanaka group, other groups recapitulated and found the iPSC technology to be more reproducible, effective, safe and a therapeutically compatible iPSC generation for the clinical setting. More studies about recent trends will be further discussed. The challenge of iPSC technology remains similar to those faced in the human embryonic stem cells (hESC) field, such as appropriHanyang Med Rev 2015;35:190-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.7599/hmr.2015.35.4.190 pISSN 1738-429X eISSN 2234-4446