Breakthrough: UCLA Team Creates Nerve Cells From Skin - Bypassing Embryos |
They created motor neurons out of induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. |
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Editors published 2/25/2009 10:27:00 AM
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A team from the University of California Los Angeles led by William Lowry, created the first motor neurons from artificial embryonic stem cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, which were in turn created from ordinary skin cells.
This has huge implications for the debate over the use of and need for embryonic stem cells.
Their next step is to attach their neurons to muscle cells and see if they can make them contract.
Scientists hope that iPS cells might offer a substitute for embryonic stem cells and a short-cut to tailored medical therapy for a range of diseases.
Motor neurons make muscles contract, and being able to make new motor neurons might help treat diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, the team at the University of California Los Angeles reported.
"IPS-derived cells appeared to follow a normal developmental progression associated with motor neuron formation," they wrote in the journal Stem Cells.
William Lowry and colleagues used the method to reprogram skin fibroblasts back to an embryonic state, and then turned them into motor neurons.
The hope would be someday to use a skin sample from a patient to generate a tissue transplant, or perhaps to build a library of cell types from healthy donors to treat genetic diseases.
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