Because there are many patients waiting for curative therapy for intractable diseases such as renal failure and liver cirrhosis, we foresee a heavy demand on the technology offered by regenerative medicine. In current transplantation medicine such as renal transplantation, many patients still have chronic rejection or side effects of nonspecific immunosuppression. Recent advances in stem cell research have raised the possibility of personalized cell therapies for treating human diseases. In particular, Yamanaka's group in Japan gave new hope to scientists, patients, and the public when they developed induced murine pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in 2006 and human iPS cells in 2007. Thus, stem cell therapy using iPS or mesenchymal stem cells could open new therapeutic options.

We invite researchers to contribute original research articles as well as review articles, which will stimulate the future investigations toward personalized cell therapy using stem cells. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Development of new technologies for generating iPS cells
• Disease-specific induced pluripotent stem cells
• Differentiation of iPS cells or other stem cells to organs or tissue cells
• Transplantation of stem cells to disease model animal
• Treatment of disease by pluripotent stem cells

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