Researchers from the Riken Centre in Japan have shown that stressing blood cells (T lymphocytes), by subjecting them to transient low-pH, reprogrammed them to pluripotent stem cells.

The discoverers call this phenonmenon STAP, short for ‘stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency’. Although this work was done using mice T lymphocytes, if reproduced in humans, it would result in a low-cost and quick stem cell production method with great potential for personalised medicine!

See related articles on the Nature website:

  1. Stimulus-triggered fate conversion of somatic cells into pluripotency
  2. Bidirectional developmental potential in reprogrammed cells with acquired pluripotency