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The fate of cell reprogramming

Nature Methods volume 11, pages 1006–1008 (2014)Cite this article

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The ability to convert somatic cells to induced pluripotent stem cells has immense potential to further our understanding of development and disease mechanisms, and for cellular therapy. Before researchers can achieve these goals, they must expand current methodology to incorporate animal models and quantitative descriptions of the essential phenomena driving reprogramming.

Since the reporting of the first induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), there has been an explosion of cell reprogramming studies in the literature. The attention given to iPSCs is in large part because of the unique feature of pluripotent cells: the simultaneous potential to proliferate and differentiate. Understanding and controlling the mechanisms driving this feature have caused great expectations, both in basic research, where scientists hope to reveal how a single cell develops into a fully functional organism, and in medical research, where the potential for the study of disease mechanisms and for medical therapies based on cell reprogramming appear unbounded. Because iPSCs can originate from a specific person, whether healthy or diseased, they offer a new and relatively limitless source of cells for modeling human disease and for drug testing on relevant cell types.

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Figure 1: A cell in the pluripotent state can be thought to sit at the top of a hill from which signals pull it down into its differentiated state.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Y. Miyake for all her administrative support.

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Author notes

  1. Shinya Yamanaka is at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, San Francisco, California, USA.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Peter Karagiannis and Shinya Yamanaka are at the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.,

    Peter Karagiannis & Shinya Yamanaka

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  1. Peter Karagiannis
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  2. Shinya Yamanaka
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Correspondence to Shinya Yamanaka.

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Competing interests

S.Y. is a member without salary of the scientific advisory board of iPS Academia Japan.

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Karagiannis, P., Yamanaka, S. The fate of cell reprogramming. Nat Methods 11, 1006–1008 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.3109

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