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Stem cell research has had many ups and downs, but a stream of setbacks had left researchers almost back at square one.
Now, researchers at the New York Stem Cell Foundation Laboratory have developed a method that may help recover the lost ground.
Embryonic stem cells can generate all the tissues of the body. So if such cells could be developed from a patient’s adult cells, it might be possible to make replacement cells for any diseased tissue without fear of rejection.
At first, it seemed that embryonic stem cells could be made by implanting the nucleus of a patient’s adult cell into an unfertilized human egg, or oocyte, whose nucleus had been removed. Mysterious factors in the body of the egg instruct the adult cell how to lose its specialist nature and revert to the embryonic state, where all fates are open to it.
But the method is highly inefficient and would require tens or hundreds of oocytes for each patient. A major advance was made in 2007 when Shinya Yamanaka found a way of avoiding all use of...
Now, researchers at the New York Stem Cell Foundation Laboratory have developed a method that may help recover the lost ground.
Embryonic stem cells can generate all the tissues of the body. So if such cells could be developed from a patient’s adult cells, it might be possible to make replacement cells for any diseased tissue without fear of rejection.
At first, it seemed that embryonic stem cells could be made by implanting the nucleus of a patient’s adult cell into an unfertilized human egg, or oocyte, whose nucleus had been removed. Mysterious factors in the body of the egg instruct the adult cell how to lose its specialist nature and revert to the embryonic state, where all fates are open to it.
But the method is highly inefficient and would require tens or hundreds of oocytes for each patient. A major advance was made in 2007 when Shinya Yamanaka found a way of avoiding all use of...
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