This week has seen the publication of two reports of groundbreaking results in the field of stem cell research.

 

Scientists at San Diego California’s Salk Institute for Biological Studies have published a report in Nature describing the creation of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.  Dr. Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte’s team applied gene therapy techniques to correct defective cells from patients afflicted with Fanconi anemia.  The team reports that the created iPS cells are indistinguishable from human embryonic stem cells.  Although the research has not yet been used in humans, the iPS cells create hope that such correction might be done to the diseased cells of Fanconi anemia patients. Upon correction, the cells could be reintroduced to the patient, without risk of rejection, to rid the patient of the affliction.

 

Chinese Scientists at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology have created iPS cells adaptable to the human body from the tissue of pigs.  Similarly, the iPS cells resulting from the Chinese team’s procedure are identical to embryonic stem cells.  Researchers believe that these results accomplish a necessary step towards the use of pigs to generate human-compatible organs.  Some also think this research could enable human-like simulations of human diseases and thus a platform for drug and biologic testing which would be as much like a human clinical trial as possible.

 

View the reports here:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nature08129.pdf

http://jmcb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/mjp003

 

This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 9:03 am and is filed under General, Health Care, Litigation, News.

Tweetback for this post? Add Scientific Developments in Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells to your tweet.