Free Republic

London, October 18 : An research team in the U.S. has made a major advance in repeatedly generating induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from the tiny number of keratinocytes attached to a single hair plucked from a human scalp. Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, who led the study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, said that the breakthrough provided a practical and simple alternative for the generation of patient- and disease-specific stem cells, which had been hampered by the low efficiency of the reprogramming process. The researcher also said that the new process could spare patients invasive procedures to collect...

Embryonic stem cells have the potential to grow into any number of specialized cells. Guided in the prenatal environment, such cells become the incredible variety of cells that comprise our bodies. These pluripotent cells thus offer a new avenue for creating novel therapies for a wide range of ailments. Scientists have found it hard, however, to induce stem cells to grow in vitro the same way they grow in the womb. Now medical researchers have shown that it is possible to grow keratinocytes--the skin cells that make up our outer covering--from embryonic stem cells in the lab, though not without...