Breakthrough: Australian Scientists Regrow Mice Muscle Tissue from Adult Stem Cells |
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Editors published 3/4/2009 10:05:00 AM
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Australian scientists have become the first in the world to use adult stem cells (from a donor) to regrow damaged muscle tissue (in mice), offering hope to sufferers of muscular dystrophy.
They overcame the problem of getting the donor cells to survive for more than an hour.
The lead author, Peter Gunning, the head of the Oncology Research Unit at the University of NSW, said until now, the new healthy cells had no survival advantage over the dominant existing damaged tissue.
Furthermore, injected donor cells were almost immediately wiped out by the immune system.
"In muscle, most stem cells die in the first hour or are present in such low numbers that they are not much help," Professor Gunning said.
Scientists from the Children's Hospital at Westmead and Sydney and NSW universities tried to enhance the stem cells' survival chances by inserting an artificial, harmless virus - called a vector - into the cells, making them resistant to chemotherapy.
The diseased tissue is then killed off by chemotherapy, leaving room for the healthy cells to engraft and propagate.
The Daily Telegraph went further in Sydney scientists' stem cell world first
The donor stem cell would then be injected into the muscle and over time, the stem cell would work with the body by permanently repairing it.
"It's totally a cure: it's treating the core problem," he said.
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