What are ‘induced pluripotent cells’ or iPS cells?
Induced pluripotent cells (iPS cells) are non-pluripotent cells that were engineered (‘induced’) to become pluripotent, that is, able to form all cell types of the body. In other words, a cell with a specialized function (for example a skin cell) was ‘reprogrammed’ to an unspecialized state similar to that of an embryonic stem cell. While iPS cells and embryonic stem cells share many characteristics they are not identical.
