Lead Into Gold: Koreans Improve Upon IPSC Technique in Mouse Studies

Korean scientists have created pluripotent stem cells from normal skin cells and have further improved the technique. From the story:

Park said the overall process of making the stem cells is similar to those by U.S. and Japanese scientists, there has been a marked improvement in the success rate. “Foreign scientists used the so-called retrovirus, but we made headway by attaching the lentivirus to the transporting vector, and inserted it into the somatic cell of the lab animal,” he said.

This process resulted in a stem cell being confirmed by a fluorescent microscope. The team claimed it was able to push these stem cells to differentiate into liver, nerve and muscle tissues. They said efforts are underway to recreate the process using human somatic cells.

Patent applications are also being filed. The lawsuits to come as various bioetechnology companies vie to become the next Microsoft or Google are sure to keep lawyers happily litigating for years to come.