Chemical-only reprogramming to pluripotency

Abstract

Direct reprogramming technology has emerged as an outstanding technique for the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and various specialized cells directly from somatic cells of different species. Reprogramming techniques conventionally use viral vectors encoding transcription factors to induce fate conversion. However, the introduction of transgenes limits the therapeutic applications of the reprogrammed cells. To overcome safety-related concerns, small molecules offer some advantages over the existing methods for the control of gene expression and induction of cell fate conversion. Technical advances in optimizing concentrations, durations, structures, and combinations of small molecules make chemical reprogramming a safe and feasible method. This review provides a concise overview of cutting-edge findings regarding chemical-only reprogramming as one of the integration-free approaches to iPSC generation.

Keywords

cellular reprogramming / small molecule / chemical reprogramming / induced pluripotency / regenerative medicine

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Acknowledgments

I would like to greatly appreciate Professor Hongkui Deng form Peking University for his kind help and professor Miguel A. Esteban from the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health for reading the manuscript and helpful comments.

This work was supported by Yazd Cardiovascular Research Center.

The author declares that there are no competing interests.

This manuscript is a review article and does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg