The excitement from the reprogramming and cloning breakthroughs from earlier this month is fading, and people are looking to future paths and profits. Monkey cloner Shoukhrat Mitalipov has teamed up with a start-up company in San Diego, though it’s not exactly clear what it will be doing. Reprogramming cells without eggs or embryos will require less money, skill, and hard-to-procure material, so expect both academics and entrepreneurs to jump into the space. I’ve already seen one stem cell company touting the advance in a press release.

The intellectual property field may be more open as well. One of the teams that reprogrammed human skin cells was led by James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin, who also led the first team to generate human embryonic stem cells from leftover embryos provided by an IVF clinic. His patents covering human embryonic stem cells are controlled by WARF (Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation) and have raised howls of protest from the community. Thomson says the intellectual property surrounding reprogramming techniques will “be complicated.” When I asked WARF what that meant, I was told that the patent situation is complex because two groups made the discovery at the same time and the science is moving very rapidly. Another complicating factor is that the two groups used different techniques to reprogram cells, and whispers of forthcoming techniques are growing into shouts.

That doesn’t yet mean patient advocates should be dancing in the streets. To keep us levelheaded, Newsweek’s Sharon Begley has an article that’s informative and easy to read. Also, while several prolife blogs are hoping the end is nigh for embryonic stem cells, the scientists leading the egg-free reprogramming breakthrough are making a strong case that studies of embryonic stem cells hold the keys for using these so-called induced pluripotent cells. See an editorial in Nature and this article from AFP.

For what it’s worth: Of the articles that appeared at the time of announcement, I particularly enjoyed the articles from Bloomberg , Nature, and Science.