Cellular Reprogramming of Human Peripheral Blood Cells

Breakthroughs in cell fate conversion have made it possible to generate large quantities of patient-specific cells for regenerative medicine. Due to multiple advantages of peripheral blood cells over fibroblasts from skin biopsy, the use of blood mononuclear cells (MNCs) instead of skin fibroblasts will expedite reprogramming research and broaden the application of reprogramming technology. This review discusses current progress and challenges of generating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from peripheral blood MNCs and of in vitro and in vivo conversion of blood cells into cells of therapeutic value, such as mesenchymal stem cells, neural cells and hepatocytes. An optimized design of lentiviral vectors is necessary to achieve high reprogramming efficiency of peripheral blood cells. More recently, non-integrating vectors such as Sendai virus and episomal vectors have been successfully employed in generating integration-free iPSCs and somatic stem cells.