诱导性多能干细胞技术的研究进展及其应用前景

Progress and Potential Applications of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Technology——Editorial

在分化的体细胞中表达转录因子可以诱导体细胞重编程,获得诱导性多能干细胞(induced pluripotent stem cells,iPS cells)。这些细胞具有不断的自我更新能力和多向分化潜能,这些细胞重编程领域的突破性研究进展,为细胞重编程机制、人类疾病发病机制的研究及发展新的治疗方法提供了一种强有力的工具。iPS细胞技术是当前干细胞研究领域的热点之一,近年来取得了迅猛的发展。最初,研究者利用逆转录病毒作为载体将4种转录因子导入小鼠成纤维细胞诱导其重编程。近年来,iPS细胞的诱导方法不断改进,包括使用不整合入宿主细胞基因组的病毒载体、非病毒载体或者用基因敲除的方法切除导入的外源基因,从而产生了更为安全的iPS细胞系,许多小分子化合物也被证实能显著提高重编程效率。iPS细胞在再生医学、疾病模型的建立及药物筛选等领域正逐渐显现出它巨大的应用价值。本文回顾过去几年iPS细胞技术的研究进展,包括诱导方法的改进、iPS细胞诱导效率的提高和安全性的提高,并探讨iPS细胞的临床应用前景及当前研究存在的问题。

Differentiated somatic cells can be reprogrammed to a pluripotent state through ectopic expression of specific transcription factors. These reprogrammed cells, which were designated as induced pluripotent stem （iPS） cells, are detected to exhibit unlimited self-renewal capacity and pluripotency. This breakthrough in stem cell research provides a powerful and novel tool for the studies on pathogenesis of diseases, reprogramming mechanism and development of new therapies. For this reason, the iPSC technology has currently become one of the hot topics in stem cells research. Recently, major progress in this field has been achieved： initially, researchers succeeded in inducing the reprogramming of mouse fibroblasts by retroviral transduction of four specific transcription factors; in succession, the accelerated development of iPSC technology by employing non-integrating viral vectors, non-viral vectors or removing the introduced foreign genes via gene knock-out has ensured the yields of much safer iPSC; meanwhile, some researches discoversed the proofs that a number of micromolecular compounds were potent in accelerating the cellular reprogramming. For a prospect, iPSC are highly promising for regenerative medicine, disease modeling and drug screening. In this review, the recent progress in the generation of iPSC, prospects of their possible clinical applications and problems in the iPSC research are summarized and discussed.