Induced pluripotent stem cells and cell therapy
Banu - İskender 1 * , Halit Canatan
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1 Erciyes Üniversitesi Tıp Fakültesi Tıbbi Biyoloji Anabilim Dalı, Melikgazi, Kayseri, Turkey* Corresponding Author

Abstract

Human embryonic stem cells are derived from the inner cell mass of a blastocyst-stage embryo. They hold a huge promise for cell therapy with their self-renewing ability and pluripotency, which is known as the potential to differentiate into all cell types originating from three embryonic germ layers. However, their unique pluripotent feature could not be utilised for therapeutic purposes due to the ethical and legal problems during derivation. Recently, it was shown that the cells from adult tissues could be reverted into embryonic state, thereby restoring their pluripotent feature. This has strenghtened the possiblity of directed differentition of the reprogrammed somatic cells into the desired cell types in vitro and their use in regenerative medicine. Although these cells were termed as induced pluripotent cells, the mechanism of pluripotency has yet to be understood. Still, induced pluripotent stem cell technology is considered to be significant by proposing novel approaches in disease modelling, drug screening and cell therapy. Besides their self-renewing ability and their potential to differentiate into all cell types in a human body, they arouse a great interest in scientific world by being far from the ethical concerns regarding their embryonic counterparts and their unique feature of being patient-specific in prospective cell therapies. In this review, induced pluripotent stem cell technology and its role in cell-based therapies from past to present will be discussed.

License

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Article Type: Review

J Clin Exp Invest, 2013, Volume 4, Issue 4, 550-561

https://doi.org/10.5799/ahinjs.01.2013.04.0346

Publication date: 14 Dec 2013

Article Views: 2059

Article Downloads: 4434

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