UCLA bioengineers and colleagues have discovered and detailed a key step in cell reprogramming for safe drug testing and other personalized disease therapy.
Cell reprogramming is an emerging technology that can convert target cells pre-programmed with a biological function into malleable stem cells, or another cell type, with an entirely different function.
The research was recently published in Advanced Science and could play an important role in personalized medicine and the discovery of new drugs.
“Cell reprogramming is one of the most exciting advancements in biotechnology in the past 20 years,” said study leader Song Li, professor and chair of the bioengineering department at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. “It’s the cellular equivalent of wiping your computer’s memory clean and replacing it with new software. This is a very powerful process in biotechnology that…
