Table 1.

Comparison of different sources of hematopoietic cells for generating human iPSCs

Sources for reprogramming	Advantages	Disadvantages	Potential application of iPSCs
			Disease modeling	Cell therapy
Postnatal blood (peripheral blood and bone marrow)	Peripheral blood is among the easiest tissues to obtain. Allow repeated cell harvesting.	Limited by the availability of patients.	Yes. Patient blood cells are essential for modeling acquired/chronic blood disorders.	Yes. The most accessible sources for patient-specific iPSCs.
Umbilical cord blood	Unlikely to contain acquired mutations. Epigenetic features close to embryonic stem cells. Banked and readily available.	Relatively limited cell number per stored sample.	Yes. Can be used for modeling inherited diseases.	Yes. May provide a safer source for cell replacement therapy.
EBV-immortalized lymphocytes	Cells from patients of rare diseases and those from the family pedigree are available. Genetic backgrounds of many samples have been studied. A large quantity of cells is available.	Prolonged culture may increase the probability of accumulating additional mutations and/or karyotypic abnormalities.	Yes. Valuable for disease modeling, especially for rare diseases. Samples of deceased patients and their family members are often available.	May not be suitable due to a potentially compromised genomic integrity.