Rapid iPS Cells from Adult Human Adipose Stem Cells

A team of Stanford researchers has developed a novel method for quickly and efficiently generating human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) using human adipose stem cells (hASCs) as the starting population. Using this technique, the whole reprogramming process was reduced to ~18 days with approximately 20-fold increase in efficiency compared to fibroblasts. This approach also eliminates the risk of contamination from animal pathogens because it does not use mouse fibroblasts as feeder cells. hASCs are abundant and easily obtained from adult patients, making them and ideal source for hiPSCs that can be used for regenerative medicine and research.

Stage of Research
The inventors have validated this approach through gene expression profiling and demonstrating pluripotency of the hiPSCs in vitro and in vivo.

Ongoing Research
The inventors continue to optimize the reprogramming process.

Related Invention
hASCs can be reprogrammed to hiPSCs with a variety of techniques, including viral-free minicircle DNA as described in Stanford Docket S09-309.