Harvard Medical School researchers have outlined a more efficient, safer way to reprogram adult stem cells, a development that holds strong implications for the field and patient care.
Using human skin cells, researchers have discovered a new way to turn these cells into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that are nearly identical in quality to human embryonic stem cells. Previously, iPS cells were produced by the injection of a virus, which could adversely modify the cell’s genetic makeup.
The study, which was released yesterday, describes a more effective procedure for turning a human cell into an iPS cell, thereby increasing the availability of these potentially life-saving cells.
The study builds on the research of Japanese physician Shinya Yamanaka, who first turned adult human cells into iPS cells in 2006. These cells can be programmed to grow into a myriad of other cells, giving researchers the potential to construct human organs out of them.
Because the new method can produce higher quality iPS cells up to 100 times more efficiently, researchers say they hope it can be used for patient-specific treatments.
According to Medical School professor Derrick J. Rossi, one of the study’s authors, organs could be constructed from a patient’s own cell, which would avoid the problem of a patient’s body rejecting a donated organ transplant, which it recognizes as a foreign object.
Read the full story at the Harvard Crimson.
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