Pluripotent cells offer great promise for the future of regenerative medicine. However, cells with pluripotent potential are difficult or impossible to isolate from patients, which makes methods for experimentally induced pluripotency in readily available somatic cells invaluable. Accompanying the September issue of Nature Reviews Molecular and Cell Biology, and free to access online, is a poster by Christopher Lengner and Rudolf Jaenisch, which compares and contrasts the properties of pluripotent embryonic stem cells with those of laboratory-generated pluripotent cells.
In the same issue of the journal is a related Essay, The promise of human induced pluripotent stem cells for research and therapy, by Shin-ichi Nishikawa, Robert A. Goldstein and Concepcion R. Nierras (Nature Reviews Molec. Cell Bio. 9, 725-729; 2008) The abstract:
Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are human somatic cells that have been reprogrammed to a pluripotent state. There are several hurdles to be overcome before iPS cells can be considered as a potential patient-specific cell therapy, and it will be crucial to characterize the developmental potential of human iPS cell lines. As a research tool, iPS-cell technology provides opportunities to study normal development and to understand reprogramming. iPS cells can have an immediate impact as models for human diseases, including cancer.
A glossary and a list of recommended further reading is also available.
See also the Nature Reviews collection of articles on stem cells, which is free to access online for six months.