Disease-corrected haematopoietic progenitors from Fanconi anaemia induced pluripotent stem cells.

The generation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells has enabled the derivation of patient-specific pluripotent cells and
provided valuable experimental platforms to model human disease. Patient-specific iPS cells are also thought to hold great
therapeutic potential, although direct evidence for this is still lacking. Here we show that, on correction of the genetic defect,
somatic cells from Fanconi anaemia patients can be reprogrammed to pluripotency to generate patient-specific iPS cells.
These cell lines appear indistinguishable from human embryonic stem cells and iPS cells from healthy individuals. Most
importantly, we show that corrected Fanconi-anaemia-specific iPS cells can give rise to haematopoietic progenitors of the
myeloid and erythroid lineages that are phenotypically normal, that is, disease-free. These data offer proof-of-concept that
iPS cell technology can be used for the generation of disease-corrected, patient-specific cells with potential value for cell
therapy applications.