Science breaks new ground in cell renewal

Irishtimes.com

Scientists have reached yet another milestone in the goal to produce replacement cells for any tissue type in the body. A team from Stanford University in California have converted cells from a mouse’s tail directly into brain cells.

While much research remains to be done to confirm the breakthrough, the research team believes they have come up with effective way to produce any of the many tissue types in the body. The goal as ever is to be able to produce healthy replacement cells as a treatment for conditions such as motor neuron disease and Parkinson’s. The method is much simpler to achieve than that developed in 2006 by Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University.

Mr. Yamanaka astounded the world’s science community by developing a way to take ordinary skin cells and make them revert to a cell type found in the developing embryo, pluripotent stem cells. These cells have the capacity to change into any of the more than 200 distinct cell types in the body. More>>