Stem Cell News

A startup biotech company claims to have induced an embryonic stem cell state without using viruses.

Rather than using retroviruses to ferry the genes into the cells, PrimeGen used tiny carbon-based particles coated with DNA that codes for the same four reprogramming genes used by Yamanaka – including Oct3/4 and a fifth gene called Nanog.

The team then mixed the particles with human skin cells, kidney cells, or cells from the retina.

The particles were quickly taken up by the adult cells, which were reprogrammed into an iPS cell-like state, says PrimeGen president John Sundsmo. Coating the delivery particles with the proteins encoded by the five genes had the same effect, he says.

Sundsmo says that colonies of iPS-like cells formed after about a week. Yamanaka's technique, by contrast, takes more than a month to form colonies of iPS cells. Most remarkably, Sundsmo claims that PrimeGen's method is much more efficient, forming about 1000 times as many colonies of reprogrammed cells.

Pretty cool, if it turns out to be reproducible.