Human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) have become an intriguing approach 
for neurological disease modeling, because neural lineage-specific cell types 
that retain the donors' complex genetics can be established in vitro. The 
statistical power of these iPSC-based models, however, is dependent on accurate 
diagnoses of the somatic cell donors; unfortunately, many neurodegenerative 
diseases are commonly misdiagnosed in live human subjects. Postmortem 
histopathological examination of a donor's brain, combined with premortem 
clinical criteria, is often the most robust approach to correctly classify an 
individual as a disease-specific case or unaffected control. In this study, we 
describe iPSCs generated from a skin biopsy collected postmortem during the 
rapid autopsy of a 75-year-old male, whole body donor, defined as an unaffected 
neurological control by both clinical and histopathological criteria. These 
iPSCs were established in a feeder-free system by lentiviral transduction of the 
Yamanaka factors, Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc. Selected iPSC clones expressed 
both nuclear and surface antigens recognized as pluripotency markers of human 
embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and were able to differentiate in vitro into 
neurons and glia. Statistical analysis also demonstrated that fibroblast 
proliferation was significantly affected by biopsy site, but not donor age 
(within an elderly cohort). These results provide evidence that autopsy 
donor-derived fibroblasts can be successfully reprogrammed into iPSCs, and may 
provide an advantageous approach for generating iPSC-based neurological disease 
models.