Spanish scientists A. Giorgetti et al. from the Center of Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona reported in the October 2nd issue of Cell Stem Cell their study results on reprogramming human cord blood (CB) cells with two transcription factors (Oct4 and Sox2). The investigators cultured the CB cells for 24 hrs. in the presence of stem cell factor, thrombopoietin, Flt ligand 3, and interleukin 6 prior to transduction with GFP reporter retrovirus carrying the Oct4 and Sox2 genes. The study results demonstrated that an enriched population of CB-derived CD133+ (CD133-derivatized magnetic beads) gave rise to iPS cells following transduction of the Oct4 and Sox2. The researchers noted that CB cells produced iPS cells at a higher reprogramming efficiency in which 28% of tranduced CB cells formed iPS cells (CBiPS). Quantiative RT-PCR assays revealed that the CBiPS cells expressed the pluripotency markers Oct4, Sox2, Nanog, Rex1, Cripto, Klf4 and c-Myc. The researchers were able to differentiate in vitro CBiPS cells into cellular lineages of the three embryonic germ layers. The authors concluded from their study that "large-scale production and banking of CBiPS lines representing a wide panel of HLA haplotypes, organized in a publicly available network could represent an alternative for future clinical applications" in regenerative medicine.