Converting adult somatic cells to pluripotent stem cells using a si...(enerate iPS cells more efficiently -- 10...),Health

"The use of a single lentiviral vector for the derivation of iPS cells will help reduce the variability in efficiency that has been observed between different laboratories, thus enabling more consistent genetic and biochemical characterizations of iPS cells and the reprogramming process," the researchers concluded.

"We believe that the specific design of the cassette together with the fact that all four genes are expressed from the same transcript could account for the high efficiency we obtained" commented Cesar A. Sommer, first author in the paper and a postdoctoral fellow at Boston University Medical School's Gastroenterology Section.

Most importantly, several iPS clones were generated with a single viral integration, a major advance compared to the multiple integrations observed in other studies.

"Now we could move forward toward the elimination of the whole cassette using recombination technologies", noted Mostoslavsky.

Darrell N. Kotton, another co-author on the paper and an Assistant Professor at Boston University Medical School's Pulmonary Section mentioned that preliminary studies already confirmed that the STEMCCA vector works with high efficiency for the reprogramming of human cells.

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