Dr. Marc Darrow, M.D., J.D.

(CNSNews.com) A scientific breakthrough that enables researchers to create adult stem cells much faster and easier will radically transform the way medicine is practiced, predicts Dr. Marc Darrow,assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of California/Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine.

It will be the standard of care, said Darrow, who teaches regenerative techniques utilizing platelets and adult stem cells to medical residents at UCLA, and who has been using the same techniques to treat patients with joint, tendon, ligament and muscle injuries in his own LAclinic.

Darrow explained that in the past, creating stem cell lines was a very tedious procedure which required using a pipette to take nuclear material from one cell to put into another.

But an article published January 29th in the peer-reviewed journalNature describes a new technique for creating undifferentiatedadult stem cells by immersing blood cells in an acid bath for half an hour.

BiologistHaruko Obokata, a stem cell researcher from Japans RIKEN Center of Developmental Biology, then injected the acid-stressed, florescently-tagged blood cells into a mouse embryo, where they created entire organs including a beatingheart.

Haruko Obokata (RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology)

Its amazing. I would have never thought external stress could have this effect, said study co-author YoshikiSasai. (See STAP cells.pdf)

The generation of these cells is essentially Mother Natures way of responding to injury, added co-author Charles Vacanti, director of the Laboratory for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine at the Harvard-affiliated Brigham Womens Hospital.

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Adult Stem Cell Breakthrough Will Transform Medicine ...