How do stem cells derived from blood differ from those from embryos? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Stem cells used to be derived from human embryos, but not anymore. Now a simple blood test can allow stem cells to be induced from cells found there, says Johns Hopkins cell engineering expert Vasiliki Machairaki.

Machairaki: Induced pluripotent stem cells it means that we induce them, we make these cells to become and to behave like the human embryonic stem cells. They are not human embryonic stem cells, they are not coming from human embryos but they behave like the human embryonic cells.                           :20

This strategy enables personalized medicine.

Machairaki: The beauty of this is that we can take from the blood of an individual who is like 80 year old or from a little bit of skin fibroblast and we can make the cells to become like human embryonic stem cells.             :13

Such cells are used in Machairaki’s lab to study Alzheimer’s disease, while other labs use them to study many other diseases and conditions. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.