When the first iPS cells were developed two years ago in Japan and the United States, skin cells were reprogrammed to be able to have properties similar to a human embryonic stem cell.
Some of the top American researchers who specialize in both embryonic and reprogrammed adult stem cells were scheduled to present, and no doubt this had the more conservative elements in fits.
Biologicals are made in living cells--usually bacteria, yeast or cultured mammalian cells that have been reprogrammed by the introduction of new genetic material to synthesize the drug, which is then highly purified.
The iPS cells, which have many of the same basic properties, do not raise the same ethical questions as embryonic stem cells because they come from skin or now fat cells that have been reprogrammed to go back in time, so to speak, and have the ability to turn into any other kind of cell in the body.
Her enthusiasm for the promise of adult stem cell therapies and induced pluripotent stem cells (adult cells that have been reprogrammed into stem cells) was evident.