Episomal iPSC Reprogramming System

Placing the power of iPSCs into your handsWhen you're using stem cells for modeling disease, discovering and developing new drugs, or building novel cell-based therapeutics, reliable generation of iPSCs is critical. Even better if the iPSCs are transgene-free. With SBI’s Episomal iPSC Reprogramming System you can quickly and efficiently reprogram human or mouse cells for a range of in vivo applications.

• Ideal for in vivo studies—iPSC generation that's virus-free and footprint-free
• Efficient—get 70% more iPSC colonies than when using standard retroviral methods
• Fast—iPSC colony formation is complete in 25 days
• Flexible—works with both feeder and feeder-free conditions
• Easy—a simple, hands-free workflow for reliable reprogramming

SBI's Episomal iPSC Reprogramming System is based on the Epstein-Barr Nuclear Antigen-1 plasmid system (oriP/EBNA-1) that has been proven to reliably and efficiently generate iPSCs free from the risk of integrated transgenic sequences¹. The system works efficiently with patient fibroblasts and blood cells², and can even generate iPSCs from difficult-to-reprogram source cells like older patient fibroblasts (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Reprogram difficult source cells with the Episomal iPSC Reprogramming System. Successful iPSC reprogramming of eight-times passaged human dermal fibroblasts from a sixty-year-old patient sample is achieved with SBI’s Episomal iPSC Reprgramming System (left panel), but not with the standard Yamanaka OSKM factors (right panel).

The system contains Oct4, Sox2, Klf4, L-myc, Lin28, shRNA-p53, and miR302/367 cluster reprogramming factors, along with a GFP marker for monitoring transfection efficiency and plasmid loss over time. Unlike traditional plasmid systems, the oriP/EBNA-1 system replicates in synchrony with the host genome by anchoring itself to chromatin and replicating during each cell cycle divisions. The episomal plasmids are naturally lost at up to 5% per cell division cycle, with most cells losing the episome completely by passage fifteen. References

1. Okita K, et al. A more efficient method to generate integration-free human iPS cells. Nat Methods. 2011 May; 8(5):409-12. PMID: 21460823.
2. Schlaeger, et al. A comparison of non-integrating reprogramming methods. Nat Biotechnol. 2015 Jan; 33(1):58-63. PMCID: PMC4329913.