Non-viral method of generating stem cells from adult somatic cells

Collaboration opportunity | Licensing opportunity

Researchers at Edinburgh University and Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto have developed a safer, non-viral, plasmid vector for generating induced pluripotent stem cells.

The vector enables researchers to transfect the four genes required for reprogramming somatic cells in a single fragment. Once reprogramming is complete the genes can be removed.

This reprogramming technology enables the complete elimination of exogenous reprogramming factors and provides a safer method for producing induced pluripotent stem cells for drug screening, regenerative medicine and the creation of disease models.

The new, safer method, provides a practical method for producing an unlimited supply of standardised human induced pluripotent stem cells for regenerative medicine and drug screening, with milimal or no genome modification for cell banking.

Potential applications of the technology include:

• the establishment of induced pluripotent stem cells in order  to study the processes involved in enabling cells to become pluripotent

• a means of creating more representative disease models by creating induced pluripotent stem cells from patients

• the production of unlimited supplies of reliable human pluripotent cells for in vitro drug screening

• the potential to make cells that can be differentiated to generate desired cell types for therapy

UK and US patents have been filed.

Edinburgh University would like to hear from companies wishing to license this technology or collaborate in its future development. This can be done by visiting the University Technology website at http://www.university-technology.com/details/non-viral-method-for-creating-induced-pluripotent-stem-cells.