Saturday, October 07, 2006
Breakthrough in adult stem cells
The term 'Kyoto Protocol' may acquire a new and much more positive meaning!
Shinya Yamanaka and Kazutoshi Takahashi, at Kyoto University, have developed a new and nearly magical recipe for turning your own skin cells into 'pluripotent' stem cells, which can be re-inserted into the body to re-grow bad tissues and organs. Their method already works in mice, so it should (but not necessarily must) work in humans.
The Yama-Taka method does not require any sort of contribution from embryos, so it has no ethical problems.
1. Start with a scraping of skin cells.
The term 'Kyoto Protocol' may acquire a new and much more positive meaning!
Shinya Yamanaka and Kazutoshi Takahashi, at Kyoto University, have developed a new and nearly magical recipe for turning your own skin cells into 'pluripotent' stem cells, which can be re-inserted into the body to re-grow bad tissues and organs. Their method already works in mice, so it should (but not necessarily must) work in humans.
The Yama-Taka method does not require any sort of contribution from embryos, so it has no ethical problems.
1. Start with a scraping of skin cells.
