Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, more commonly called reprogrammed cells, start out as skin or other somatic (body) cells, zip back in developmental time to a stem-cell-like state, then are coaxed to assume whatever guise researchers wish to study. The cells are the route to personalized implants, because they come from the patient who needs a spare part. But that will require a lot of testing. More immediate, and more exciting I think, is when iPS cells serve as living time machines.
Imagine taking an affected cell from a person very sick from a degenerative disease, and reversing the clock, glimpsing in a lab dish how things began to go wrong.
A good disease to dissect using reprogrammed cells is age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
Read the full, original story: Patient-Specific Stem Cells Recapitulate Age-Related Macular Degeneration
