Stem cells can transform into any tissue and are already being trialed for
healing the eye, heart and brain. The latest development, published in the
journal Nature, could make the technology cheaper, faster and safer.
The human body is built of a lot of kinds of cells, each with a
specific role - nerve cell, liver cell, muscle cell – and for each cell, the
role is determined and cannot be changed. However, stem cells can become any other
type of cell, and they have become a major field of research in medicine for
their potential to regenerate the body.
So what makes a heart cell different from a liver cell? The two
cells express different sets of genes. Likewise, a stem cell turns on
specific sets of genes to differentiate into another cell. For this reason,
it has been thought to be impossible to reprogram a differentiated cell and
revert it back to a stem cell.
However, in January 2014, a female Japanese researcher made it happen.
[Who
discovered?]
Dr Haruko Obokata, a 30-yrs-old woman researcher from the Riken
Centre for Developmental Biology in Japan.
 |
| Dr Haruko Obokata explains how she nearly gave up on the project when fellow researchers didn't believe what she had found http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25917270 |
[How is it different from older discoveries?]
In making STAP cells, body cells can "be reset" or reverted back to a stem cell just by applying strong stimuli. Such transformation is known to occur in plants, but the team’s researchers have shown that animal cells possess the same ability.
In her research, Dr Haruko Obokata let body cells pass through a very narrow pipe. And she miraculously discovered that some body cells have turned into stem-cell-like-state.
That was when she thought cells can be reverted back to a stem cell by applying stimuli somehow. So she soaked some cells in acid and half-killed them in order to apply some stimuli. Then 20-30mins later, cells have changed and reset.
 |
| http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0000987502 |
In their previous researches, they all reprogrammed body cell into stem cell by using something else. For example, Yamanaka’s IPS cell’s, they used a virus to deliver four stem cell factors into skin cells, causing the differentiated stem cells to go into an embryonic-stem-cell-like state. This simply means, we put something from outer world into body cell and created a system to “reset the cell.”
But in STAP cells’ case, we put body cells into an environment where these body cells get stressed. Then, these stressed body cells lose its function as a body cell and turns back into a state of stem cell. In this case, we force body cell to “reset itself.”
[How
we can utilize this technology]
Once scientists can create differentiated cells from stem cells,
then there are many possibilities for their use, such as drug testing and
cell-based therapies. Added in the future...
Stem cell 'major discovery' claimed
STAP cell discovery overturns common beliefs in biology
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