iPS cells

The demonstration that pluripotent stem cells could be generated by somatic cell reprogramming led to wonder if these so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells would extend our
investigation capabilities in the cancer research field. The first iPS cells derived from cancer cells have now revealed the benefits and potential pitfalls of this new model. iPS cells appear to be an innovative approach to decipher the steps of cell transformation as well as to screen the activity and toxicity of anticancer drugs. A better understanding of the impact of reprogramming on cancer cell-specific features as well as improvements in culture conditions to integrate the role of the microenvironment in their behavior may strengthen the epistemic interest of iPS cells as model systems in oncology.

Ischemic heart disease is the leading cause of global mortality, and cardiovascular diseases represent a major challenge for
researchers because of the overall health complications associated with them. Numerous studies have shown that it is exceedingly
difficult to induce cardiomyocytes to divide, resulting in a flood of interest in attempting to treat cardiac ischemia
through the delivery of new cardiomyocytes. To do so, researchers have started investigating the potential of using induced
pluripotent stem cells (iPS) to derive functional cardiomyocytes.

In 1998, the Council for Science and Technology established the Bioethics Committee and asked its members to examine the ethical and legal aspects of human cloning. The Committee concluded in 1999 that human cloning should be prohibited, and, based on the report, the government presented a bill for the regulation of human cloning in 2000. After a debate in the Diet, the original bill was slightly modified and issued on December 6, 2000. In this paper, I take a closer look at this process and discuss some of the ethical problems that were debated. Also, I make a brief analysis of the concept " the sprout of human life. " Not only people who object to human cloning, but also many of those who seek to promote research on human cloning admit that a human embryo is the sprout of human life and, hence, it should be highly respected. I also discuss the function of the language of utilitarianism, the language of skepticism, and religious language appeared in the discussion of human cloning in Japan.

Despite several decades of extensive research efforts, there is yet no single permanent cell line available from marine invertebrates as these cells stop dividing in vitro within 24–72 h after their isolation, starting cellular quiescence. This ubiquitous quiescent state should be modified in a way that at least some of the quiescent cells will become pluripotent, so they will have the ability to divide and become immortal. Following the above need, this essay introduces the rationale that the discipline of marine invertebrates’ cell culture should gain from applying of two research routes, relevant to mammalian systems but less explored in the marine arena. The first is the use of adult stem cells (ASC) from marine organisms. Many marine invertebrate taxa maintain large pools of ASC in adulthood. Ample evidence attests that these cells from sponges, cnidarians, flatworms, crustaceans, mollusks, echinoderms, and ascidians play important roles in maintenance, regeneration, and asexual cloning, actively proliferating in vivo, resembling the vertebrates’ cancer stem cells features. The second route is to target resting somatic cell constituents, manipulating them in the same way as has recently been performed on mammalian induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. While “iPS cells” are the outcome of an experimental manipulation, ASC are natural and rather frequent in a number of marine invertebrates. Above two cell categories reveal that there are more than a few types of seeds (cells) waiting to be sowed in the right soil (in vitro environmental conditions) for acquiring stemness and immortality. This rationale carries the potential to revolutionize the discipline of marine invertebrate cell cultures. When cultured “correctly,” ASC and “iPS cells” from marine invertebrates may stay in their primitive stage and proliferate without differentiating into cells lineages, harnessing the stem cell’s inherent abilities of self-replication versus differentiated progenies, toward the development of immortal cell lines.

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have numerous applications in livestock to improve production traits, disease resistance,
biopharming, conservation of germplasm, disease modeling, regenerative medicine etc. Here, we have described the
derivation of iPSCs from buffalo fetal fibroblasts (BuiPSCs) by lentivirus based transduction of mouse derived pluripotency
marker genes Oct4, Sox2, Klf4 and c-Myc. The BuiPSCs showed typical buffalo embryonic stem cells like colony morphology
which were alkaline phosphatase (AP) positive and expressed pluripotency markers Oct4, Nanog, SOX2, KLF4,
FoxD3 and SSEA1, TRA-1-60, TRA-1-81. The cells were carrying normal karyotype and were able to differentiate into cell
of all three germ layers in vitro. The BuiPSCs could be propagated beyond 20th passages. To the best of our knowledge, this
is the first report on generation of buiPSCs in domestic water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) using mouse derived transcription
factors and the reprogrammed cells could self renew more than 20th passage.

The international political sociology (IPS) of risk is generally concerned with understanding the governance of uncertainty. As economists Bodie and Merton (1999) have classically described it, risk is uncertainty that matters. Risk is a rationality of governing the uncertain that affects the ways in which individuals and collectivities live, organize themselves, and exercise power. However, there is no single rationality of risk, and, as illustrated in this essay, rationalities of risk change as a function of the knowledge that informs them. A major concern of the IPS of risk is the ways in which uncertainty has become a central problem for governance. The ways in which risks are assessed and managed are taken as problematic spaces from which to question the roles of states, societies, economic actors, and individuals in coping with uncertainty. International Relations (IR) as a discipline has slowly begun to incorporate theoretical developments in risk theory arising from sociology, economics, and anthropology. This is a recent development that begins mainly with the end of the Cold War, although there are traces of risk theory having been applied to security analysis prior to this period. This essay contextualizes the introduction of risk as a problem for analysis within IR and explores three main approaches: the risk society thesis, the governmentality ...

This article attempts to elucidate how moral complicity arguments of human induced　pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) research imply for the research in Japan. After the first　chapter describes the background and purpose of this article, the second chapter　introduces three views of moral status of human embryos and their implications for　human embryonic stem cell (ESC) research. The third chapter analyses the characteristics of moral complicity of human iPSC research, especially in terms of promoting wrongdoing and benefiting from wrongdoing. Finally, based on the Japanese views of handling of human embryos and human ESC research, from the viewpoint of consistency, the fourth chapter clarifies which implications moral complicity arguments have for hiPSC research in Japan.

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC) is considered as the major structural legal reform in India. It is making a robust Indian economy by reducing the amount of Non-Performing Assets and improving Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) ranking. It has attracted investors from abroad because they now seek India as a legible place for investment owing to the reasons as, smaller timeframe for resolution reduces risk of losing investment and flexible exit policy, even when company becomes insolvent the IBC gears towards maximum realisation of value of assets. It has given a new identity to the Indian Economy on the International platform. It seeks to create a single unified law for insolvency and bankruptcy. This research empirically studies IBC as an important tool in the growth of the Indian Economy and analyses the impact of reengineering/ restructuring under IBC on the Indian Economy. The study analyses the role of Insolvency Professionals in the Insolvency process and makes recommendations thereafter for expanding their role as Turnaround Professionals. This empirical research study is exploratory in nature.

Adenylate kinases (AKs) are phosphotransferases that regulate the cellular adenine nucleotide composition and play a critical role in the energy homeostasis of all tissues. The AK2 isoenzyme is expressed in the mitochondrial intermembrane space and is mutated in reticular dysgenesis (RD), a rare form of severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) in humans. RD is characterized by a maturation arrest in the myeloid and lymphoid lineages, leading to early onset, recurrent, and overwhelming infections. To gain insight into the pathophysiology of RD, we studied the effects of AK2 deficiency using the zebrafish model and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived from fibroblasts of an RD patient. In zebrafish, Ak2 deficiency affected hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell (HSPC) development with increased oxidative stress and apoptosis. AK2-deficient iPSCs recapitulated the characteristic myeloid maturation arrest at the promyelocyte stage and demonstrated an increased AMP/ADP ratio, in...

One of the most common diseases of the pancreas is diabetes mellitus. The current treatment of exogenous insulin supply is not fully capable of achieving tight control of glucose regulation, leading to long-term complications. Hence, recent success in islet transplantation-based therapies for diabetes mellitus and the extreme shortage of pancreatic islets have motivated recent efforts to develop renewable sources of islet-replacement tissue. Of clinical interest, I review the recent progress on stem cell-based strategies for diabetes in view of regenerative medicine.

Clinical usefulness of embrionic and iPS cells. iPS cells appears to have more ethical and medical advantages. At present,  treatments with human adult stem cells have been found to be most clinically useful  for therapeutic purposes.These cells have the advantage of having low immunogenicity and without the ethical problems of the embrionic stem cells. But what about the actual clinical results using these differents treatments for the same purpose?

Somatic cells have been reprogrammed into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that recapitulate the pluripotent nature of embryonic stem (ES) cells. Reduced pluripotency and variable differentiation capacities have hampered progress with this technology for applications in regeneration medicine. We have previously shown that Germ Cell Nuclear Factor (Gcnf) is required for the repression of pluripotency genes during ES cell differentiation and embryonic development. Here we report that iPS cell lines, in which the Gcnf gene was properly reprogrammed , allowing expression of Gcnf, repress pluripotency genes during subsequent differentiation. In contrast, iPS clones in which the Gcnf gene was not reprogrammed maintained pluripotency gene expression during differentiation and did not differentiate properly either in vivo or in vitro. These mal-reprogrammed cells re-capitulated the phenotype of Gcnf knock out (Gcnf −/−) ES cells. Re-introduction of Gcnf into either the Gcnf negative iPS cells or the Gcnf −/− ES cells, rescued repression of Oct4 during differentiation. Our findings establish a key role for Gcnf as a regulator of iPS cell pluripotency gene expression. It also demonstrates that reactivation of the Gcnf gene may serve as a marker to distinguish completely reprogrammed iPS cells from incompletely pluripotent cells, which would make therapeutic use of iPS cells safer and more practical as it would reduce the oncogenic potential of iPS cells.