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Nature Biotechnology 26, 1246–1248 (1 November 2008) | doi:10.1038/nbt1108-1246

The many ways to make an iPS cell

William E Lowry & Kathrin Plath

Despite their immense promise, induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells face several major hurdles on the road to clinical application. One immediate challenge is that current reprogramming methods involve expression of putative oncogenes by retroviral vectors, which may themselves cause cancer by integrating into the genome in a way that disrupts endogenous gene expression.