Inside a laboratory at ipierian in South San Francisco, Calif. a stunning transformation is taking place. Using viruses, scientists insert four genes into the genome of skin cells taken from patients with a rare, often fatal disease called spinal muscular atrophy. During three weeks of tending the researchers induce a fraction of a percent of the cells to morph into embryonic-like stem cells. But they don't use a single embryo.rnIpierian, a sapling with only 35 employees, then coaxes these "induced pluripotent stem cells" into becoming neurons and brain cells known as astro-cytes. Over the past 18 months university researchers have transformed, such cells into beating heart cells, liver cells, kidney cells and others. Several companies and hundreds of academic labs in the U.S., Japan and Europe are also creating these newfangled stem cells.
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