Ghosts of Stem Cells Past

Are all induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells created equal? How similar are they to ES cells? My latest post at the Stem Cell Network looks at two recent papers asking these questions.

Turning Mouse Tails Into Replacement Blood Cells for Sickle Cell Anemia

Induced pluripotent cells (iPS) have been garnering lots of attention (and papers) lately, since it was first shown that adult fibroblasts (and since then, skin cells) can be reprogrammed to pluripotency by forced expression of a handful of genes. Despite much speculation, it has remained unknown until now whether these cells are actually be good for anything, therapeutically speaking.

While it remains to be seen whether iPS can give rise to autonomous souls, Jaenisch's groups has now shown that iPS can be applied therapeutically. They derived iPS from the tail fibroblasts of sickle cell anemia mice, fixed their genetic deficiency ex vivo, differentiated them into hematopoietic progeintor cells and transplanted them back into the affected mice to restore a functional pool of red blood cells. Pretty damn cool.