HSCI researchers achieve major breakthrough in cell reprogramming
A group of Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers has made so significant a leap forward in reprogramming human adult cells that HSCI co-director Doug Melton, who did not participate in the work, said the Institute will immediately begin using the new method to make patient and disease-specific induced pluripotent stem cells, know as iPS cells. “This work by Derrick Rossi and his colleagues solves one of the major challenges we face in trying to use a patients own cells to treat their disease,” said Melton, who is also co-chair of Harvard’s Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. “I predict that this will immediately become the preferred method to make iPS cells from patients and, indeed, at the HSCI we are turning our entire iPS core to using this method,” Melton said. The findings today were given advance on-line publication by Cell Stem Cell. Click here to hear Derrick Rossi and Doug Melton describe this work at a press conference Rossi’s group at...