Cell ‘rebooting’ technique sidesteps risks

September 26, 2008

Writing in Science1, a team led by biologist Konrad Hochedlinger of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, describes how it transformed mouse tail and liver cells into an embryonic-like state. And unlike other scientists who had previously made such ‘induced pluripotent stem cells’, or iPS cells, Hochedlinger’s team did not use a virus that integrates itself into a cell’s genome to ‘reboot’ the cells. Instead, the team used an adenovirus, which keeps out of a cell’s own DNA, avoiding the potential for serious side-effects such as cancer, which might result from viral disruption of a cell’s DNA. (Nature)