Human Oct-4 Adenovirus (Ad-h-Oct4)

Oct-3/4 is one of the family of octamer ("Oct") transcription factors, and plays a crucial role in maintaining pluripotency. The absence of Oct-3/4 in Oct-3/4+ cells, such as blastomeres and embryonic stem cells, leads to spontaneous trophoblast differentiation, and presence of Oct-3/4 thus gives rise to the pluripotency and differentiation potential of embryonic stem cells. Various other genes in the "Oct" family, including Oct-3/4's close relatives, Oct1 and Oct6, fail to elicit induction, thus demonstrating the exclusiveness of Oct-3/4 to the induction process.Co-expression of Oct4, Sox2, KLF4 and c-Myc (Yamanaka set) in somatic cell will lead to iPSC reprogramming. Using adenovirus to deliver these transcription factors has 2 main advantages - it does not incorporate into the targeted host and therefore avoids the potential for insertional mutagenesis, and the expression is transient for a brief amount of time in order for effective reprogramming to take place. This adenovirus expresses human Oct4, and it can be used in combination with other iPSC factor for the induction of iPSC reprogramming.