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Therapeutic Possibilities of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells

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Translational Stem Cell Research

Part of the book series: Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine ((STEMCELL))

Abstract

A fundamental goal of human cell therapy is to regenerate ailing organs affected by congenital and acquired disease processes. Pluripotent stem cells such as embryonic stem (ES) cells can be differentiated into progenitor and fully differen­tiated cell types of all adult organs such as the brain, pancreas and the heart and therefore represent a promising source of cells for use in cell therapy for a variety of diseases. Importantly, the recent discovery that terminally differentiated somatic cells can be reprogrammed into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells with many of the properties of ES cells including the potential to generate diverse adult cell types bypasses important ethical concerns surrounding the derivation and use of human ES cells. Here, the therapeutic promise and limitations of these pluripotent cell types are discussed with a focus on iPS cells and their possible use in regenerative medicine, disease modeling and the development of pharmacological agents.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Prof AG Smith for the opportunity to work in his distinguished laboratory and for critically reading this manuscript. I am grateful to Dr Andrew Grace for discussion on the application of iPS cells to cardiac electrophysiology, and am indebted to Dr Yasuhiro Takashima for experimental direction and technical help. I thank the Wellcome Trust for funding my Clinical Research Training Fellowship at the Cambridge Centre for Stem Cell Research and, finally, ESTOOLS for the opportunity to partake in useful collaborative work and educational activities across Europe.

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Ayetey, H. (2011). Therapeutic Possibilities of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells. In: Hug, K., Hermerén, G. (eds) Translational Stem Cell Research. Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60761-959-8_8

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