Researchers make nerve cells from new "stem" cells

Reuters ^ | Feb 24, 2009 | Maggie Fox

[neverdem]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Researchers said on Tuesday they had made a type of nerve cell out of ordinary skin cells in a new approach to stem cell research.

They made motor neurons out of induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells -- a type of cell made from ordinary skin cells that resembles human embryonic stem cells.

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.

They looked like neurons taken from human embryonic stem cells, the researchers added.

Stem cells are the body's master cells, and a type taken from days-old embryos, called embryonic stem cells, have the ability to morph into any cell or tissue type in the body.

Researchers have identified the genes needed to turn back the clock in a cell and make it act like one of those baby cells, and several teams found a way last year to do it -- calling the result iPS cells.

William Lowry and colleagues used the method to reprogram skin fibroblasts back to an embryonic state, and then turned them into motor neurons...

[sometime lurker]

Very promising! Thanks for posting.

[txnativegop]

A step in the right direction. I am hopeful that it will lead one day to the peripheral nerves. Long way to go on that though.

[nomad]

With the ongoing attack on our nation by the forces of Barky and company,I`d forgotten there are other things of interest.

[Gene Eric]

check this

[neverdem]

UCLA stem cells scientists make electrically active motor neurons from iPS cells

Induced pluripotent stem cell ping, this press release gives more info, and a way to link the abstract here:

Directed differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells generates active motor neurons

I was hoping that the method could have been determined without initially using human embryos. Is it OK to use this knowledge, as long as no further human embryos are sacrificed?

What I'm afraid of is that for every type of differentiated cell, they may not have confidence unless they the produce identical results from induced pluripotent stem cells compared to human embryonic stem cells in gene expression, protein function, etc.

Considering the track record of human embryonic stem cells, and the difficulty in obtaining them, maybe they won't as it appears that they are using fertilized eggs to obtain them.