CD34 to iPS: A New Look at Banking?
Monday March 30th, 2009 @ 05:11:20 EST

Boston, MA -

The generation of inducible pluripotent stem cells (iPS) has allowed creation of
embryonic-like cells that appear to have similar degree of pluripotency and gene
expression. Originally iPS cells were made from skin cells. A more recent
paper (Loh et al. Generation of induced pluripotent stem cells from human blood.
Blood 2009 Mar 18) described the use of adult peripheral blood CD34 cells as a
starting population for generation of iPS cells.

The investigators used mobilization of healthy adults to collect CD34 cells,
which were then retrovirally transfected with OCT4, SOX2, KLF4 and MYC. They
found that the artificial iPS cells were identical to embryonic stem cells when
assessing:
a) morphology,
b) expression of surface antigens and pluripotency-associated transcription
factors,
c) DNA methylation status at pluripotent cell-specific genes,
d) capacity to differentiate in vitro and in teratomas

So now the question comes...how long will it be before a service is set up for
people to make and bank their own "individual specific" iPS cells?