Today Dr. Jenice D’Costa, Senior Scientist at VIRxSYS, participated in the Maryland Stem Cell Research Symposium. The event featured research supported by the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund (MSCRF) and federal agencies in the state of Maryland as well as presentations and poster sessions by researchers, such as VIRxSYS, who have been awarded MSCRF grants. This marks the first time in U.S. history in which both state and federal entities collaborated to address critical issues in stem cell research. VIRxSYS received a grant from the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission (MSCRC) to develop safer methods for induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS) using the company’s proprietary spliceosome-mediated RNA trans-splicing (SMaRT™) and lentiviral gene delivery platform technologies. iPS cells have the ability to develop into different cell types in the body and have potential therapeutic applications for the regeneration of damaged organs or replacement of defective tissues with genetically corrected stem cells, giving these cells many potential clinical applications. If iPS cells are administered using gene delivery systems that integrate within the DNA of the cells, there is a possibility that they may be reactivated to express pluripotency factors inappropriately. The VIRxSYS lentiviral vector delivery system is thought to be safer because it is integration deficient and will result in only transient expression of these factors, which will eventually be lost as the cells are reprogrammed into pluripotent stem cells. The VIRxSYS SMaRT™ technology will link the expression of these ‘reprogramming” factors to genes which are turned on only at the relevant stage of cell differentiation, and then shut off once iPS are generated. The VIRxSYS technology is an elegant alternative to the current methods in practice to generate iPS cells using virus based delivery techniques without their potential downsides.