Int J Biol Sci 2010; 6(7):796-805. doi:10.7150/ijbs.6.796 This issue
Review
Department of Oncology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
The recent advances in the induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) research have significantly changed our perspectives on regenerative medicine by providing researchers with a unique tool to derive disease-specific stem cells for study. In this review, we describe the human iPSC generation from developmentally diverse origins (i.e. endoderm-, mesoderm-, and ectoderm- tissue derived human iPSCs) and multistage hepatic differentiation protocols, and discuss both basic and clinical applications of these cells including disease modeling, drug toxicity screening/drug discovery, gene therapy and cell replacement therapy.
Keywords: Stem Cell, Disease Modeling, Drug Screening, Liver Disease