Generation of human-induced pluripotent stem cells by a nonintegrating RNA Sendai virus vector in feeder-free or xeno-free conditions.

The generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from somatic cells has enabled the possibility of providing unprecedented access to patient-specific iPSC cells for drug screening, disease modeling, and cell therapy applications. However, a major obstacle to the use of iPSC for therapeutic applications is the potential of genomic modifications caused by insertion of viral transgenes in the cellular genome. A second concern is that reprogramming often requires the use of animal feeder layers and reagents that contain animal origin products, which hinder the generation of clinical-grade iPSCs.

Applications of quantitative polymerase chain reaction protein assays during reprogramming.

The capability to reprogram human somatic cells to induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) has opened a new area of biology and provides unprecedented access to patient-specific iPSCs for drug screening, disease models, and transplantation therapies. Although the process of obtaining iPSC lines is technically simple, reprogramming is a slow and inefficient process consisting of a largely uncharacterized chain of molecular events. To date, researchers have reported a wide range of reprogramming efficiencies, from <0.