A nonviral minicircle vector for deriving human iPS cells

• DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.1426
• Publication Date: 2010-02-07T18:25:19Z
• Authors: Fangjun Jia; Kitchener D Wilson; Ning Sun; Deepak M Gupta; Mei Huang; Zongjin Li; Nicholas J Panetta; Zhi Ying Chen; Robert C Robbins; Mark A Kay; Michael T Longaker; Joseph C Wu
• Keywords: Minicircle; Insertional mutagenesis; Transduction (biophysics)

Owing to the risk of insertional mutagenesis, viral transduction has been increasingly replaced by nonviral methods to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). We report the use of 'minicircle' DNA, a vector type that is free of bacterial DNA and capable of high expression in cells, for this purpose. Here we use a single minicircle vector to generate transgene-free iPSCs from adult human adipose stem cells.