Opening up the black box of human cell plasticity

Historical view of the development of reprogramming and schematic of chemical reprogramming from somatic cells to human CiPSCs

Cell plasticity represents the ability of cells to acquire new characteristics. Cell plasticity can be reset in somatic cells via cellular reprogramming, a process that occurs in regeneration. However, cell plasticity occurs rarely in humans. Recently, Guan et al. recreated cell plasticity in mature human cells, which they found to be essential for reprogramming human somatic cells to pluripotent stem cells using only small molecules. As the first study demonstrates that chemical compounds can completely reprogram human somatic cells to a pluripotent state, it is a paradigm shift in developing pharmacological or therapeutic reprogramming approaches to control human cells.