Virus-free pluripotency for human cells

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For the first time, specialized human cells have been transformed into a state similar to that seen in embryonic stem cells, without using viruses. The advance edges stem-cell biologists closer to clearing a barrier to using reprogrammed cells for therapies and drug screening.

"The field has been waiting for these papers," says Marie Csete, chief scientific officer at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine in San Francisco.

Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent — capable of generating all the body's specialized cell types — and creating tailor-made cell lines might allow scientists to better study human diseases and test possible treatments. That looked difficult until 2006, when Shinya Yamanaka and his colleagues at Kyoto University in Japan reported that they had reprogrammed mouse skin cells into an embryonic-like state by infecting them with a virus containing four genetic factors. Yamanaka called the reprogrammed cells induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.

Since then, scientists have used various viral vectors to reprogram human cells with the 'Yamanaka factors', and have used non-viral methods to reprogram mouse cells. No one had been able to reprogram human cells without using viruses — which integrate unpredictably into the genome — until now.

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090227/full/458019a.html

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