Robust generation of clinically applicable human pluripotent stem cells from peripheral blood by chemical reprogramming

The derivation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which can self-renew and generate unlimited patient-specific functional cells, has revolutionized regenerative medicine 1 . iPS cell-based cell therapies are now achieving promising progress in clinical trials for a range of major diseases 2 . However, the conventional transcription factor-based reprogramming approaches for generating clinical-grade, patient-specific iPS cell lines remain prohibitively expensive, time-consuming, and reliant on complex exogenous gene delivery systems 1 , 2 , 3 , which severely impedes their broader clinical translation.