Lineage-specific reprogramming as a strategy for cell therapy

Embryonic stem (ES) cells are endowed with extensive ability for self renewal and differentiation. These features make them a promising candidate for cell therapy. However, despite the enthusiasm and hype surrounding the potential therapeutic use of human ES cells and more recently induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, to date few reports have documented successful therapeutic outcome with ES-derived cell populations. This is probably due to two main caveats associated with ES cells, their capacity to form teratomas and the challenge of isolating the appropriate therapeutic cell population from differentiating ES cells. We have focused our efforts on the derivation of skeletal muscle progenitors from ES cells and here we will discuss the strategy of reprogramming lineage choices by overexpression of a master regulator, which has proven successful for the generation of the skeletal myogenic lineage from mouse ES cells.