
TOKYO -- Japan is scrambling to commercialize a treatment using induced pluripotent stem cells, hoping to mount a comeback in a field it pioneered.
Australian startup Cynata Therapeutics took the world by storm last month by announcing that it has successfully tested the safety and efficacy of a treatment based on induced pluripotent stem, or iPS, cells. This marked the first such company-led clinical trials. Those "master" cells have the ability to become any other cell type in the body.