Generation of human induced pluripotent stem cells from cord blood cells.

We report that iPS cells can be safely and effectively generated from fresh human cord blood (CB) cells with Sendai virus (SeV) vector carrying reprogramming factors OCT3/4, SOX2, KLF4, and c-MYC. The SeV vector is a single strand RNA virus having no DNA phase, and selectively infects the freshly isolated CD34+ CD45low+ fraction of CB cells corresponding to hematopoietic progenitors. Approximately twenty ES cell-like colonies emerged from 1 x 104 freshly isolated CD34+ CB cells around 18 days after SeV infection and were selected for passage to reduce the frequency of the remaining SeV-infected cells. The complete elimination of viral constructs was confirmed after several passages by immunostaining with monoclonal antibody against hemagglutinin-neuraminidase (HN) and by RT-PCR analysis. Five ES cell-like clones were selected to examine their in vitro potential for three germ layer differentiation and their capacity for teratoma formation. Generation of non-integrating Sendai virus (SeV) iPS cells from CB cells may be an important step to provide allogeneic iPS cell-derived therapy in the future.