Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

Abstract

A limiting factor for the identification of disease mechanisms and development of new therapies has been the access to a model system/s that can faithfully recapitulate key features of the disease and more precise clinical translations of new treatments. Stem cells in this regard are very promising, but the ethical issues related to totipotent embryonic stem cells and functional constraints to unipotent somatic stem cells have led to focus on induced pluripotent stem cells to avoid both functional and ethical constraints. The introduction of human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (iPSC) technology provides a model system to replicate diseases in humans. In this technology, human somatic cells can be “reprogrammed” by the transgene expression of four transcription factors into stem cells called iPSC. In this chapter, it will be discussed how iPSCs can be used for disease modelling, drug discovery and regenerative medicine.

Keywords: Disease modelling, Embryonic Stem Cells, Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

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