4.3 IPSCs
The appearance of IPSCs has profound implications for the source of
pluripotent stem cells. Because the access of embryonic stem cells is
controversial, IPSC technology sidesteps a majority of the ethical
issues, which results in the acceptability of stem-cell therapy for wide
application. However, there is still a lack of understanding regarding
IPSCs, which are currently not being used for clinical therapy. Current
clinical application of IPSCs is restricted for cell models of diseases,
which remain difficult for scientists to simulate in vitro. Because
patients’ somatic cells can revert back to pluripotent stem cells after
utilization of IPSC technology, then under the current steering, normal
somatic cells can become model cells. Considering this characterization,
IPSC technology is an ideal method for acquiring model cells through
patients’ somatic cells because it does not cause obvious damage to
patients. Sa et al. compared IPSC-derived ECs and native pulmonary ECs
of iPAH patients in order to investigate the feasibility of IPSC-derived
cells. The results showed that two types of cells manifest a similar
phenotype. This result indicates that enormous progress has been made,
because whether sugen, hypoxia, or MCT-induced PAH has a certain gap
with iPAH, the easier method to derive human-source disease model cells,
which is a huge leap for exploring the real mechanisms of iPAH(Sa et
al., 2017).
In the past 2 years, IPSC therapy trials in patients have also been
established. However, all IPSC clinical therapy trials are still in the
recruiting stage. Only after a session of completed research will we be
finally able to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of IPSC
therapy and then consider whether IPSC therapy can finally become a
feasible treatment for human diseases.