Posted on 03/30/2005 5:30:02 AM PST by ex-Texan
Researchers at AntiCancer Inc have found a method of turning adult hair follicle stem cells into brain cells, a ScienCentral News report has said. Using mice for experiments, scientists managed to coax their adult stem cells into becoming neurons, the brain’s nerve cells.
Stem cells differ from other cells since they have the capability to turn into specialized cells required by the body for maintenance and repair. Stem cells in hair follicles are located in a tiny protrusion on the side and are required for helping the follicle maintain itself. According to the researchers, the results of the experiment indicate a new ‘source of undifferentiated multi-potent stem cells’.
Calling the development sheer ‘luck’, AntiCancer president Robert Hoffman said that researchers were trying to ‘image the stem cells in the brain’ when the stumbled onto the discovery. They linked a gene that makes jellyfish glow under fluorescent light to a protein called nestin, which exists in brain cells. After that, a mouse was introduced into the imager to ‘see the brain’.
However, what researchers saw was ‘the green fluorescence of the skin’, Hoffman said adding that the team then knew that ‘nestin must be expressed in the skin because the green fluorescent protein was expressed and they’re linked’. The glowing hair follicles indicated that ‘there was a relationship between the stem cells of the hair follicle and the stem cells of the brain’. “We put them in culture and under conditions where brain stem cells would form neurons, the hair follicle stem cells also formed neurons. We also injected some of these stem cells into the skin of mice and they formed neurons there, too,” Hoffman said.
Now, researchers have the task of isolating the hair follicle stem cells and growing these stem cells in the laboratory. If successful, the development could eliminate the need for using embryos as sources of stem cells. Also, it could open new avenues for research into tissue and organ transplants as well into neurological conditions. The findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A fluorescent green hamster would be cool! =)
Stem cells will revolutionize life as we know it, but it'll take well over a year before any treatments are practically available.
Not dismissing your overall point - which is quite valid - but just your hypothetical timeframe.
Then it is true - hair follicles really ARE part of the thinking apparatus! Explains why people scratch their heads.
I thought Phyllis Diller was just making a joke when she explained her hairdo as "This isn't hair, this is NERVE ENDS!"
Very unlikely, given the extent of her brain damage and impairment. This and other stem cell research may help other people, though.
The fact that hair grows quickly and is continually replenished makes it an attractive source to harvest the amount of stem cells needed for treatments.I'm not debating the time ussue here. I do not have the medical expertise. I just think hair cells raise new medical ethics and moral issues to consider. Afer all, the hair stem cells could be harvested directly from Terri Schiavo. Who knows what the limitations are on medical possibilities?This has been a major stumbling block of stem cell research, as well as controversy surrounding the ethics of harvesting cells from embryos.
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science study shows nerve cells can be grown from hair follicle stem cells.
Stem cells are immature cells that have the ability to become any kind of tissue in the body.
We know how to make stem cells turn into given types of tissue, but we don't yet know how to get them to do it where they need to go in the arrangement that we need them to be.
In other words, we can turn stem cells into heart cells, but we can't form them into a heart. We can only perform the most rudimentary treatments with stem cells right now (e.g., inject them into a heart tear where they will bind to the existing heart tissue and help repair the damage) and even that is experimental.
PS. I'm using "we" in the generic sense; I am not a physician.
PS. And even if researchers figured out how to do it tomorrow, the corrupt, inept FDA would likely hold it up for years...
So9
No kidding. Barbers could become millionaires.
The implications for Alzheimers patients are also staggering.
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