Forcing mouse embryonic fibroblasts to express MyoD was found to be sufficient to turn those cells into myoblasts.
The cells induced a wide, functional and long-lasting transdifferentiation process that reduced the effects of hyperglycemia in diabetic mice.
Zhou et al. (2008) injected Ngn3, Pdx1 and Mafa into the dorsal splenic lobe (pancreas) of mice to reprogram pancreatic exocrine cells into β-cells in order to ameliorate hyperglycaemia.
[24] In prostate cancer, treatment with androgen receptor targeted therapies induces neuroendocrine transdifferentiation in a subset of patients.
[25][26] No standard of care exists for these patients, and those diagnosed with treatment induced neuroendocrine carcinoma are typically treated palliatively.
[29] Determining the unique set of cellular factors that is needed to be manipulated for each cell conversion is a long and costly process that involved much trial and error.
An international team of researchers have developed an algorithm, called Mogrify(1), that can predict the optimal set of cellular factors required to convert one human cell type to another.
When tested, Mogrify was able to accurately predict the set of cellular factors required for previously published cell conversions correctly.
Cells can also be evaluated based upon their ability to integrate into the corresponding tissue in vivo[19] and functionally replace its natural counterpart.
[35] It has been found for induced pluripotent stem cells that when injected into mice, the immune system of the synergeic mouse rejected the teratomas forming.
Part of this may be because the immune system recognized epigenetic markers of specific sequences of the injected cells.
[3] In order to accomplish transfection, one may use integrating viral vectors such as lentiviruses or retroviruses, non-integrating vectors such as Sendai viruses or adenoviruses, microRNAs and a variety of other methods including using proteins and plasmids;[36] one example is the non-viral delivery of transcription factor-encoding plasmids with a polymeric carrier to elicit neuronal transdifferentiation of fibroblasts.