Triggering a pathway designed to sense viral infection can help
boost generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs),
suggesting that the viruses used by many reprogramming methods
influence the fate of the cell. The new research, published
today (October 25) in Cell, suggests that targeting the pathway
without using viruses could avoid the risk that the viruses’
genetic material will integrate into the genome and cause the
cell to become cancerous—a common concern for iPSC therapies.
“This is something everyone else missed before,” said Gioacchino
Natoli, an experimental oncologist at the European Institute of
Oncology in Italy who was not involved in the study. An innate
immune response to the viral vector is clearly needed for
reprogramming, and “stimulating this leads to reprogrammed cells
without exogenous DNA being integrated,” he added. Six years
ago, Shinya Yamanaka identified four key transcription factors,
that, when transduced into cells using a viral vector, caused
cells to de-differentiate