In December of 2009, a paper was published showing that induced pluripotent stem cells, also called iPS cells, could be used to rescue vision in blind rats.

This international collaborative research effort was led by Prof. Dennis Clegg at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and Prof. Pete Coffey at the University College London (UCL).

Researchers at UCSB were able to make these human iPS cells differentiate, or turn into, retinal cells. Specifically, they turned them into retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) cells. These cells are essential for proper vision. Collaborators at UCL then took these cells and transplanted them into rats that were blind due to having inherited dysfunctional RPE cells. The transplanted cells rescued the blind rats’ vision; they could see.

These findings suggest that these RPE cells, derived from iPS cells, could be used to treat blindness, such as blindness caused by age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness in the Western world. This is just one of the many potential therapeutic applications of iPS cells.

First created in 2007, human iPS cells are a very recently created type of stem cell with great potential. iPS cells are virtually identical to human embryonic stem cells (also called hESCs) except for their origins.

Both iPS cells and hESCs are pluripotent, meaning they have the potential to become any cell type in the body. However, while hESCs are created from human embryos, iPS cells are cells that were originally from adult tissues, such as skin from an adult body, but have been “reprogrammed” to a hESC-like state. The reprogramming is done by basically forcing adult cells to produce proteins that are key for the pluripotency of hESCs. The resultant cells look and act nearly identical to hESCs.

Because they are not derived from embryos, iPS cells help alleviate some of the ethical concerns surrounding the use of hESCs. Additionally, iPS cells can theoretically be patient-specific, using any adult cells from the patient to generate them. Consequently, iPS cells hold great potential for use in regenerative therapies.  Continued