Fair Value Please, page-284

Whilst an unlimited supply of healthy MSCs is definately nice to have (and there are potentially a lot of applications for them) induced pluripotent stem cells can in theory become any cell in the body if they are treated with the right factors and find themselves in an environment that mimics the natural environment of the cell you want them to become closely enough. Many types of cell need to make physical contact with something grow and to develop. Hence the interest in 3D scaffold-like structures for the creation of artifical organs.

IPSC's might become nerve cells or muscle cells. But for applications like that the cells would be expected to engraft into tissues in the body not just be there temporarily.

Because an ipsc is essentially still an unnatural cell regulators are still going to be wary of long term consequences of cells made from ipscs where the ipsc produced cells are going to become tissues or organs and to engraft in the body longer term (than say MSCs) because in those cases there is more time for cancers to emerge from any faults in the cells.

Those hoping for regenerative medicine to be able to give us replacement organs are hoping that ipsc-derived cells will be able to be used to create those.

It will be easier to get approval for ipsc-derived cells in applications where the cells will need to engraft into the body for a longer time if there are already ipsc-derviced cells that have been shown to be safe in more short term applications - as is the case with MSC cells (which I believe do not engraft).