Induced Pluripotency with Endogenous and Inducible Genes

The recent discovery that two partly overlapping sets of four genes induce nuclear reprogramming of mouse and human has opened up new possibilities for cell replacement therapies.  Although the combination of genes that induce pluripotency to some extenet, Oct4 and Sox2 appear to be a prerequisite.  The introduction of four genes, several of which have been linked with cancer, using retroviral approaches is however unlikely to be suitable for future clinical applications.