Perspective

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The labyrinth of nuclear reprogramming Free
Ignacio Sancho-Martinez1, Emmanuel Nivet1, and Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte1,2,*
1Gene Expression Laboratory, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 10010 North Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA
2Center for Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona, Dr Aiguader 88, Barcelona 08003, Spain *Correspondence to:Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, E-mail: belmonte@salk.edu, izpisua@cmrb.eu
J Mol Cell Biol, Volume 3, Issue 6, December 2011, 327-329,  https://doi.org/10.1093/jmcb/mjr031

Human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) have the capability to differentiate into all somatic cell types, a process that recapitulates the early stages of human development. However, the use of ESCs raises several controversies, particularly concerning the ethical dilemma regarding the use of human embryonic material and the need for embryo destruction. The discovery of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology in 2006 (Takahashi and Yamanaka, 2006) opened the door for possible application of pluripotent stem-cell-related therapies in the clinic as well as for the generation of patient-derived pluripotent stem cells suitable for disease modeling in vitro. Nuclear reprogramming is known to involve a series of steps leading to the epigenetic erasure of adult cell identity, including abnormalities responsible for disease development, by the establishment of a pluripotent network (Boyer et al., 2005; Wang et al., 2006).