The development of iPSCs reflected the merging of three major scientific streams and has in turn led to additional new branches of investigation. However, there is still debate about whether iPSCs are functionally equivalent to ESCs. This question should be answered only by science, not by politics or business.

The ethical debate surrounding human pluripotent stem (PS) cell research is mainly due to use of human embryonic stem (ES) cells. It has been suggested by many that human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells would end the debate due to their non-embryonic origin. This review examines the ethical issues surrounding the use of iPS cells and their ES cell counterparts, and argues that while iPS ce...

Background: Promyelocytic leukemia protein (PML) is a tumor suppressor protein that is involved in myeloid cell differentiation in response to retinoic acid (RA). In addition, RA acts as a natural morphogen in neural development. Objectives: This study aimed to examine PML gene expression in different stages of in vitro neural differentiation of NT2 cells, and to investigate the possible role o...

Cellular reprogramming achieved by somatic nuclear transfer or cell fusion has long been recognized.1 The potency of specific transcription factors as cell fate determinants was first demonstrated by the discovery of MyoD, a master regulator for skeletal muscle differentiation, and by the subsequent identification of several genes as lineageconverting transcription factors in blood cells.2,3 Th...

Embryonic stem cells have two unique properties. They are capable of indefinite self-renewal and, being pluripotent, they can differentiate into all possible cell types, including germ cells. A new study by Cowan et al. (2005) published in Science shows that human embryonic stem cells are able to reprogram the nuclei of fully differentiated human somatic cells, apparently conferring on them a p...

Differentiated cells can be reprogrammed to an embryonic-like state by transfer of nuclear contents into oocytes or by fusion with embryonic stem (ES) cells. Little is known about factors that induce this reprogramming. Here, we demonstrate induction of pluripotent stem cells from mouse embryonic or adult fibroblasts by introducing four factors, Oct3/4, Sox2, c-Myc, and Klf4, under ES cell cult...