Prospect of Stem Cells in Bone Tissue Engineering: A Review

Figure 2

To generate iPSCs, fibroblasts (or another type of adult somatic cell) are transduced with retroviruses encoding four pluripotency factors (SOX2, KLF4, c-MYC, and OCT4). Fully reprogrammed iPSCs have similar properties to ESCs. They are competent to form teratomas on injection into mice and are capable of generating progeny. Patient’s cells can be used to derive iPSCs, which can then be induced to undergo differentiation into various types of somatic cells, all with the same genetic information as the patient. Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd., Nature, Yamanaka & Blau [42], copyright © 2010.