Cellular reprogramming using protein and cell-penetrating peptides

Abstract

Recently, stem cells have been suggested as invaluable tools for cell therapy because of their self-renewal and multilineage differentiation potential. Thus, scientists have developed a variety of methods to generate pluripotent stem cells, from nuclear transfer technology to direct reprogramming using defined factors, or induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Considering the ethical issues and efficiency, iPSCs are thought to be one of the most promising stem cells for cell therapy. Induced pluripotent stem cells can be generated by transduction with a virus, plasmid, RNA, or protein. Herein, we provide an overview of the current technology for iPSC generation and describe protein-based transduction technology in detail.