April 12th, 2011

Penn Medicine reports:

PHILADELPHIA – Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have devised a totally new and far more efficient way of generating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), immature cells that are able to develop into several different types of cells or tissues in the body. The researchers used fibroblast cells, which are easily obtained from skin biopsies, and could be used to generate patient-specific iPSCs for drug screening and tissue regeneration.

iPSCs are typically generated from adult non-reproductive cells by expressing four different genes called transcription factors.  The generation of iPSCs was first reported in 2006 by Shinya Yamanaka, and multiple groups have since reported the ability to generate these cells using some variations on the same four transcription factors.

Read the full story: A New Way to Make Reprogrammed Stem Cells