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Stem cell-based neural repair to regenerate healthy and functional spinal cord neural cells has provided new opportunity to intervene in spinal cord injury.Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, derived from adult somatic cells by forced expression of certain genes, can resemble embryonic stem (ES) cells to give rise to all the fully differentiated tissues and may provide an ideal and abundant neural cell source for cell-based therapy of spinal cord injury (SCI).Recent study demonstrated a specific and active population among astrocytes inside the spinal cord plays an important role in neural repair and regeneration after SCI.In order to obtain that active astrocyte population, the aim of this study is to generate a virus-free iPS derived active astrocyte population to repair the injured spinal cord.Our research group has successfully utilized cell penetrating peptide (CPP) to deliver cardiac transcription factor GATA4 into somatic cells and into injured myocardium for cardiac regeneration.In this study we will test the hypothesis that our established CPP protein delivery system could be used to generate virus-free iPS cells and also to direct neural differentiation.Upon completion of this study, we will provide a safe and reliable strategy to generate and differentiate iPS in a novel virus-free approach for neural repair and regeneration.