iSPCs

First, there was the great hope of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), and then there was the inevitable letdown. When the announcement came, in 2006, that simple adult skin cells could be reprogrammed – reverted back to an embryonic stem cell state by the addition of just four genes – it seemed like an almost magical solution to the problems of using stem cells from embryos. But then some studies started to find that the reprogramming process was not perfect – iPSCs were similar, but not identical, to the cells from early embryos. More critically, only about 1% of the cells treated with…