Cellular reprogramming is a newly emerging field with promising clinical applications. The ability to generate non-dividing crucial cell types from rapidly proliferating cell types, the potential to heal diseased people who do not have many treatment options, being able to bypass immune rejection, and avoid invasive surgery has captured the media's attention. However, there have been disparities in the efficiency of reprogramming and these needs to be addressed before cellular reprogramming can be applicable in a clinical setting. To better understand the variations of cellular reprogramming, human and mouse fibroblasts were converted into induced neural cells in an attempt to unveil the impact of disease state, tissue origin and genetics. The experimental results indicate reprogramming efficiency was reproducible within a primary fibroblast line however there was a dramatic difference between lines even from an isogenic source. Testing a larger number of fibroblast lines, even lines with the identical genetic backgrounds and tissue origins, is likely the most direct means of improving reprogramming efficiency and enabling this procedure to be available for therapeutic use.
Read
