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Updated: Jun 4, 2025

Author Spotlight: Transmitochondrial Cybrid Generation Using Cancer Cell Lines
Published on: March 17, 2023
Decoding cancer etiology with cellular reprogramming
Mo-Fan Huang1, Megan E Fisher1, Trinh T T Phan2
1Department of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology, McGovern Medical School, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA; The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, TX 77030, USA.
None:
Cancer research remains clinically unmet in many areas due to limited access to patient samples and the lack of reliable model systems that truly reflect human cancer biology. The emergence of patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells and engineered human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) has helped overcome these challenges, offering a versatile alternative platform for advancing cancer research. These hPSCs are already proving to be valuable models for studying specific cancer driver mutations, offering insights into cancer origins, pathogenesis, tumor heterogeneity, clonal evolution, and facilitating drug discovery and testing. This article reviews recent progress in utilizing hPSCs for clinically relevant cancer models and highlights efforts to deepen our understanding of fundamental cancer biology.
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