A Decade of Transcription Factor-mediated Reprogramming to Pluripotency

Overview

Journal Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol

Specialties Cell Biology
Molecular Biology

Date 2016 Feb 18

PMID 26883003

Citations 401

Authors

Kazutoshi Takahashi

Shinya Yamanaka

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The past 10 years have seen great advances in our ability to manipulate cell fate, including the induction of pluripotency in vitro to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). This process proved to be remarkably simple from a technical perspective, only needing the host cell and a defined cocktail of transcription factors, with four factors - octamer-binding protein 3/4 (OCT3/4), SOX2, Krüppel-like factor 4 (KLF4) and MYC (collectively referred to as OSKM) - initially used. The mechanisms underlying transcription factor-mediated reprogramming are still poorly understood; however, several mechanistic insights have recently been obtained. Recent years have also brought significant progress in increasing the efficiency of this technique, making it more amenable to applications in the fields of regenerative medicine, disease modelling and drug discovery.

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