Harvard Researcher Develops New Method Similar to Dedifferentiation
Related News: Stem Cell Research, Stem Cells and SkinTechnically speaking, I don't think this is full blown dedifferentiation, as we know thats a method of causing an adult cell to revert back to a stem cell. However, this is close on the heels of that kind of research.
Nature is reporting on new a research project being run by Kevin Eggan of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. Recently he told an international scientific meeting that his lab has fused a human embryonic stem cell to an adult skin cell. Eggan further showed that the embryonic stem cell effectively "reprogrammed" the skin cell's nucleus, which then caused the skin cell to start behaving like an embryonic stem cell.
Eggan's research gives rise to the possibility that researchers may be able one day to develop human embryonic stem cell lines genetically matched to individual patients without first having to create an embryo clone of the patient. The theory is that researchers could reprogramme a patient's skin cells to behave like stem cells.
Currently, this process isn't fully possible yet. In this study, the hybrid cells made by Eggan contain twice the amount of DNA found in normal cells. So needless to say, they can't be transplanted into the body for therapy. However, Eggan thinks that it should be possible to overcome this shortcoming.
Other scientists at the meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research in San Francisco, said that the research has promise, but warn that it might not so be easy to remove the extra DNA from the hybrids.
"It's nice that he's shown reprogramming, but it will be important to see whether he can get rid of the extra nucleus," says Rudolf Jaenisch, a biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "I think it might be pretty tough to do."
Posted on June 28, 2005 01:22 PM