Induced pluripotent stem cells — IPS cells, for short — have been the darlings of the stem cell research community pretty much since they were created in 2006. But for the most part they’ve been the tools of the scientific elite — only available to those with enough experience to make the cells themselves.
Researchers hope that will change with the opening of a new stem cell bank at the Buck Institute in Novato in the next few years. Just as tissues and blood banks store and categorize precious human biological material, the IPS cell bank will contain donations from 3,000 people, most of whom have terrible diseases like Alzheimer’s.
IPS cells are adult cells, usually skin or blood cells, that have been regressed to an early, blank-slate state. From there, the IPS cells can be coaxed into any other type of cell. Scientists use those cells to study what happens to the body in both healthy and diseased states.
The cells aren’t terribly difficult to make (so I’m told), but manufacturing them requires time and resources that a lot of scientists, especially younger scientists, don’t have. An IPS cell bank, with thousands of cell lines available to any scientists who asks, will vastly improve access and research, stem cell experts say. Plus, the bank will be a major step toward standardizing IPS cell research and improving the quality of the stem cells used.