The beginning of a new era in stem cell therapy

A recent study published in the April 8 issue of Nature Chemical Biology enhances the "cell reprogramming" method developed by Nobel Laureate Professor Shinya Yamanaka, who is able to produce cells much more quickly and successfully. Yamanaka's method, called "cell reprogramming", allows to obtain pluripotent cells, similar to those we already know at the very beginning of the embryo. These cells are obtained by transforming existing cells of the body (such as skin cells). ), they are called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS in short.

Although transformative and extremely important, the reprogramming method of Yamanaka had to be improved in two respects. First of all, cell transformation takes a long time, about 3-4 weeks. And the successful reprogramming rate was rather low: about one in a hundred thousand.

Now, thanks to the joint work of Assoc. Professor Tamer Önder of the Faculty of Medicine of Koç University and PhD students Ayyub Ebrahimi and Kenan Sevinç, as well as Professor Udo Oppermann of Oxford University and his team, this period of Waiting has been reduced and the success rate has increased.

The challenge of viruses used to transfer Yamanaka factors to skin cells, sometimes acting rebelliously and inserting themselves into arbitrary parts of chromosomes, led Assoc. Professor Önder will study the possibility of using certain chemicals instead of viruses. After targeted testing, the team found that two chemicals produced the desired results by transforming skin cells into stem cells. This meant that two of the four Yamanaka factors were no longer needed. And applying the two-factor method instead of the four reduced the waiting time to about a week. And more importantly, the success rate has increased tenfold.

The next phase of the research will also be to eliminate the other two factors of Yamanaka. In this way, it will be much easier to apply the method in a clinical setting; as viruses will no longer be needed, there will be no danger of manipulation with the wrong gene or unwanted deletion of the effects of a particular gene.