MADISON, Wis., June 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Cellular Dynamics
International (CDI) today announced the online publication of an
article in the journal Blood demonstrating for the first
time a methodology for researchers to access the biology stored in
repositories of banked blood samples through the creation of
induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). According to the article,
entitled “Human lymphoblastoid B-cell lines reprogrammed to
EBV-free induced pluripotent stem cells,” the derived iPSCs
retained genotypic identity and were differentiated into cell types
comprising all three germ layers in the body, including blood,
heart, neural, and liver cells.
Blood samples are often banked as reference material from the
study of various diseases, rare genetic disorders and genome wide
association studies (GWAS). To bank these blood lines, they are
genetically modified through the introduction of Epstein-Barr virus
(EBV) to enable them to be frozen, thawed and proliferate
indefinitely, known as “immortalization.” This Blood paper
describes the ability to take small volumes of EBV-transformed
blood and create induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), as well as
terminally differentiated somatic cells, that do not contain the
EBV genetic modification.
“CDI’s published methodology enables the unprecedented
opportunity to take samples from disease cohort repositories
worldwide, where blood has been collected and immortalized from
patients with a wide variety of diseases and known genotypic and
phenotypic backgrounds, and create iPSC-based human cellular models
for disease research and drug discovery,” said Nick Seay, CDI Chief
Technology Officer and an author of the paper. “Our ability
to take samples of banked blood and create EBV-free iPSCs, and use
that material to manufacture cells in the quantity, quality and
purity required for research, is an important step forward in the
study of human biology and understanding the promise of
regene
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