Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells: Generation Methods and a New Perspective in COVID-19 Research

The document explores the generation and application of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), emphasizing their potential in regenerative medicine and COVID-19 research. iPSCs, reprogrammed from somatic cells, circumvent ethical and immunological issues of embryonic stem cells and can differentiate into various cell types, making them useful for disease modeling, drug screening, and personalized therapies. The document details methods for iPSC generation, highlighting non-integrative techniques like Sendai virus vectors and episomal vectors, which reduce genomic integration risks. iPSCs are particularly promising for COVID-19 research, offering realistic models for studying the virus and developing targeted therapies. Despite challenges like somatic cell memory retention and reprogramming costs, iPSCs are valuable for understanding COVID-19 pathogenesis and testing treatments, though further research is needed to enhance their clinical application.