Pluripotency preening
Over the past few days, I’ve seen a series of press releases from stem cell companies. They’ve taken the excitement generated by recent breakthroughs to draw people’s attention to their existence. And why not latch on to the general sense of euphoria? Two big advances happened within a week of each other, and both were ones that the stem-cell community had been waiting for.
First, came the announcement that embryonic stem cells could be made from cloned monkey embryos, a feat that many had deemed impossible. Nature Reports Stem Cells had a feature describing what made the advance possible as well as exclusive information on what the anonymous peer reviewers had to say about the advance. Well before the accomplishment was printed, the Niche had posted expert opinion on whether cloning papers needed additional layers of scrutiny, and Nature had decided on independent verification for cloning papers.
Next, came the announcement that human skin cells could be reprogrammed to pluripotency. Back when the breakthrough was published for mice this summer, Nature Reports Stem Cells covered what would need to happen to generate useful cells through direct reprogramming. A month earlier, we’d explored how pluripotency could be defined for human cells since the most rigorous tests are neither feasible nor ethical for humans. We also ran a profile of Shinya Yamanaka, who found the suite of genes and slogged through the screens showing that differentiated cells could be reset to a state similar to that found in the embryo. A highlight of the papers showing how human cells can be reprogrammed with only three genes.
More Nature articles are listed here.