Skin provides stem cell hopes
Thursday, 07 Jun 2007 11:31
Stem cells provide hope for debilitating diseases
Scientists
have discovered that normal tissue cells can be reprogrammed into cells
exhibiting the same properties as embryonic stem cells.
The
discovery is said to have "important" implications for disease
treatment as stem cells can help to regenerate damaged or diseases
tissue in any part of the body and could provide cures for debilitating
diseases such as Parkinson's.
A new source of stem cells is
significant as stem cells generated from human embryos raise
controversial ethical issues and supply is limited.
Generating
stem cells from a patient's own cells is also important as tissue
rejection remains a major concern with stem cell transplants.
Researchers
from Harvard and the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) took
mouse fibroblasts – cells that develop into connective tissue – and
added four transcription factors that bind to sites on the DNA.
By
doing this they were able to turn the fibroblasts into pluripotent
cells that in tests proved to be identical to embryonic stem cells.
They
argue that reprogramming adult stem cells into embryonic stem cells
could generate a potentially limitless supply of cells for tissue
engineering and transplantation medicine.
"If we can recreate
this in human cells, it has significant implications for regenerative
therapies," said study co-author Kathrin Plath from UCLA.
"Our
reprogrammed cells were virtually indistinguishable from embryonic stem
cells. We could find no evidence that they were different in any way.
We were rather surprised at how well this reprogramming worked."
Studies with the results are published today in the journals Nature and Cell Stem Cell.
