• DOI:10.1038/nprot.2012.115
• Corpus ID: 205465442

Generation of human induced pluripotent stem cells from urine samples

@article{Zhou2012GenerationOH,
  title={Generation of human induced pluripotent stem cells from urine samples},
  author={Ting Zhou and Christina Benda and Sarah Dunzinger and Yinghua Huang and Jenny Cy Ho and Jiayin Yang and Yu Wang and Ya Zhang and Qiang Zhuang and Yanhua Li and Xichen Bao and Hung-Fat Tse and Johannes Grillari and Regina Grillari‐Voglauer and Duanqing Pei and Miguel Angel Esteban},
  journal={Nature Protocols},
  year={2012},
  volume={7},
  pages={2080-2089}
}

• Ting Zhou, C. Benda, +13 authors M. Esteban
• Published 1 December 2012
• Biology
• Nature Protocols

Human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have been generated with varied efficiencies from multiple tissues. Yet, acquiring donor cells is, in most instances, an invasive procedure that requires laborious isolation. Here we present a detailed protocol for generating human iPSCs from exfoliated renal epithelial cells present in urine. This method is advantageous in many circumstances, as the isolation of urinary cells is simple (30 ml of urine are sufficient), cost-effective and universal (can be applied to any age, gender and race). Moreover, the entire procedure is reasonably quick—around 2 weeks for the urinary cell culture and 3–4 weeks for the reprogramming—and the yield of iPSC colonies is generally high—up to 4% using retroviral delivery of exogenous factors. Urinary iPSCs (UiPSCs) also show excellent differentiation potential, and thus represent a good choice for producing pluripotent cells from normal individuals or patients with genetic diseases, including those affecting the kidney.