Staying at the forefront of innovative cellular reprogramming technologies, ReproCELL’s Stemgent RNA Reprogramming portfolio is being expanded to include a cellular reprogramming kit using self-replicative RNA (srRNA) to reprogram both human blood outgrowth endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) and human fibroblasts to generate clinically relevant iPS cells. The srRNA reprogramming of EPCs into iPS cells is the first demonstrated commercial application of RNA for the cellular reprogramming of a blood-derived cell type. The non-viral/non-DNA nature of RNA reprogramming leads to clinically relevant iPS cell lines that are suitable for GMP-compliant research studies.

Expression signals of validated miRNAs that differentiated pancreato-biliary cancer from non-malignant abnormalities (A), or from cancers of other types (B).

A recent paper by Kojima, M. et al. has found a signature of miRNAs to identify patients with pancreato-biliary cancers who could benefit from surgical intervention.

Namely, a combination of eight miRNAs (miR-6075, miR-4294, miR-6880-5p, miR-6799-5p, miR-125a-3p, miR-4530, miR-6836-3p, and miR-4476) achieved a sensitivity, specificity, accuracy and AUC of 80.3%, 97.6%, 91.6% and 0.953, respectively.

In contrast, CA19-9 and CEA gave sensitivities of 65.6% and 40.0%, specificities of 92.9% and 88.6%, and accuracies of 82.1% and 71.8%, respectively, in the same test cohort. This diagnostic index identified 18/21 operable pancreatic cancers and 38/48 operable biliary-tract cancers in the entire cohort.