Non-viral approaches for direct conversion into mesenchymal cell types: Potential application in tissue engineering.

Abstract

Acquiring adequate number of cells is one of the crucial factors to apply tissue engineering strategies in order to recover critical-sized defects. While the reprogramming technology used for inducing pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) opened up a direct path for generating pluripotent stem cells, a direct conversion strategy may provide another possibility to obtain desired cells for tissue engineering. In order to convert a somatic cell into any other cell type, diverse approaches have been investigated. Conspicuously, in contrast to traditional viral transduction method, non-viral delivery of conversion factors has the merit of lowering immune responses and provides safer genetic manipulation, thus revolutionizing the generation of directly converted cells and its application in therapeutics. In addition, applying various microenvironmental modulations have potential to ameliorate the conversion of somatic cells into different lineages. In this review, we discuss the recent progress in direct conversion technologies, specifically focusing on generating mesenchymal cell types.