Word: ipse
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Harvard researchers have already created stem cells for ten genetic disorders using a new technique that isolates human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. The technique allows scientists to genetically manipulate a patient's cells—typically skin cells or blood cells—and reprogram them into a pluripotent...
IPS was first described by Japanese biologist Shinya Yamanaka, who, in 2007, showed that the introduction of four genes into an adult human skin cell could reprogram it back to an embryonic state (Yamanaka had reported the same achievement in mice the previous year). Like embryonic stem cells, these reprogrammed...
Researchers also questioned whether iPS would work with delicate cells from older people or with cells taken from patients with disease (Yamanaka used skin cells from healthy middle-aged people in his study). Eggan and Henderson tackled both issues at once, by working with cells from two siblings, ages 82...
In the lab, Eggan's group has successfully turned stem cells into motor neurons, the cells that connect the spinal cord to the body's muscles and which degenerate in ALS. But researchers have not been able to prove that these cells will be clinically useful - that is, whether the...
The answers to those questions, says Eggan, may come in a matter of "months, not years." It's still unclear whether the new iPS nerve cells can live up to the gold standard of cells created from human embryonic stem cells, but Eggan, Henderson and their colleagues are confident that...