New advancements in the use of adult, embryonic stem cells for tissue re...(een found in other tissues that normally...),Health

"Adult stem cell therapy has real potential to regenerate at least muscle and bone damaged by injury or genetic disease, and cardiac stem cells may be a way to regenerate new cardiomyocytes after myocardial infarction," says David L. Stocum, co-author of the paper.

Progress is also being made toward the use of ESCs to derive functional cells for treatment of diabetes and muscular dystrophy.

A procedure has been developed to direct the differentiation of human ESCs to pancreatic islet cells, including insulin producing cells. When implanted into mice, the cells produce human insulin in response to glucose stimulation and protect against hyperglycemia.

"ESCs show great promise as a cell source for the regeneration of new tissue, due to their high growth and self-renewal capacity, and their ability to differentiate into a myriad of precursor or differentiated cell types when directed by the appropriate set of environmental factors," says co-author Gnther K.H. Zupanc.

The recently acquired ability to reprogram adult somatic cells to ESCs in culture ("induced pluripotent stem cells") has solved bioethical concerns surrounding the destruction of somatic cell nuclear transfer embryos to make personal embryonic stem cells that will not be immunorejected. The authors state, however, that induced pluripotent stem cells raise their own biological and bioethical issues. Biological issues include the differentiation and survival time of reprogrammed somatic cells, and the need to develop methods to reprogram cells without introducing exogenous DNA. Ethical issues, including cost, the ease of reprogramming for the purpose of conducting unethical experiments, like the derivation of human offspring, have yet to be resolved.

The ability to reprogram adult somatic cells to ESCs in culture has led the authors to the co
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