BANGALORE: A few days before signing an Expression of Interest with the Central Government on research collaboration, Dr Frances Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health highlighted the current research being done in the field of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells also known as iPS. He was speaking to students of the National Centre for Biological Research in the GKVK campus.He focused on outlining current clinical challenges being faced in the studies including tendencies to produce tumours as iPS cells retain epigenetic memory of the tissue of origin. iPS technologies seek to replicate pluripotent cells which have the capability to differentiate 3 germ layers from non pluripotent somatic cells by inducing a forced expression of specific genes.He also discussed clinical trials being undertaken in the US and stated that no trials were carried out yet for iPS and only 3 trials were carried out for embryonic stem cells. “Government’s involvement has increased since the coming of the Obama administration but there are still issues like the lack of uniform regulations and activity on an international scale,” he said.He also pointed out that the lead time for returns on investment made in such research was long and so companies tended to shy away from investing.NIH is an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services focusing on biomedical and health related research and is made up of 27 separate institutes, centers and offices with specific research agendas.Twenty four of these centres are funded by Congress and administrate their own budget.
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