A research group from Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Heaklth, led by Prof. Pe Duanqing, has just announced that they have found Vitamin C can give iPS cell transformation a big boost. By adding vitamin C to the medium, the researchers managed to turn 1 to 2 percent, compared to 0.01 percent, of cells into iPS cell colonies. The results were published December 24 in Cell Stem Cell. The path that Pei's group took to identifying the beneficial role of vitamin C started with the realization that the factors that induce cells to become pluripotent were causing the cells to make the free radicals known as reactive oxygen species (ROS). "A high level of ROS is definitely very bad for the fibroblasts," Pei says, because it induces cell death at a faster rate.Pei believes that ascorbic acid is spurring the induction of pluripotency in mouse and human cells through both its anti-oxidant properties as well as an as-yet unknown mechanism. Too much ROS and the reprogramming "machine" won't start, he says. But once ROS is reduced, the machine starts, and vitamin C makes it run more smoothly. "If you have too much ROS, the whole [reprogramming] machine will not move, but then once you [reduce] ROS, I think vitamin C does something [else] to make the machine move more smoothly," he says.
A research group from Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Heaklth, led by Prof. Pe Duanqing, has just announced that they have found Vitamin C can give iPS cell transformation a big boost. By adding vitamin C to the medium, the researchers managed to turn 1 to 2 percent, compared to 0.01 percent, of cells into iPS cell colonies. The results were published December 24 in Cell Stem Cell. The path that Pei's group took to identifying the beneficial role of vitamin C started with the realization that the factors that induce cells to become pluripotent were causing the cells to make the free radicals known as reactive oxygen species (ROS). "A high level of ROS is definitely very bad for the fibroblasts," Pei says, because it induces cell death at a faster rate.Pei believes that ascorbic acid is spurring the induction of pluripotency in mouse and human cells through both its anti-oxidant properties as well as an as-yet unknown mechanism. Too much ROS and the reprogramming "machine" won't start, he says. But once ROS is reduced, the machine starts, and vitamin C makes it run more smoothly. "If you have too much ROS, the whole [reprogramming] machine will not move, but then once you [reduce] ROS, I think vitamin C does something [else] to make the machine move more smoothly," he says. 
2007