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Researchers able to direct stem cells to create certain progeny |
| Date Added: August 07, 2008 12:39:30 AM |
| Author: canadianpress.google.com |
| Category: Research |
| TORONTO — Canadian researchers have found a way to control embryonic stem cells so they give rise to only one category of cell, a first step in medicine's quest to generate specific tissues to repair or replace parts of the body that are diseased, damaged or just plain worn out.
Embryonic stem cells are programmed to spawn all the different cells of the body, from those that make up the brain or heart to those that comprise the liver or skin. Scientists worldwide have been trying to figure out the mechanisms that decide which cell becomes what. In Wednesday's issue of the journal Stem Cell, scientists at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children describe how they prodded stem cells to generate a single category of cell. Called early-stage endoderm cells, they give rise to only certain tissues in the body. "By adding a gene, we've essentially been able to take embryonic stem cells, which make everything, and push them a little bit down one particular pathway, the endoderm pathway," senior author Janet Rossant, chief of research at Sick Kids Hospital, said in an interview Wednesday. "And that's the pathway of the cells that give rise to all the tissues of the gut, to the lungs, to the liver, to the pancreas, to very important cells that one day could be used for regenerative medicine." "These cells themselves would not be used for transplantation, but they're a tool to help us understand that process." |
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