Adult Stem Cell Breakthrough Will Transform Medicine, Doctor Predicts CNS

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.

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. 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 LA clinic.

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 journal Nature describes a new technique for creating undifferentiated adult stem cells by immersing blood cells in an acid bath for half an hour.

Biologist Haruko 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 beating heart.

Its amazing. I would have never thought external stress could have this effect, said study co-author Yoshiki Sasai. (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.

Our bodies make stem cells all day long and thats probably whats keeping us alive, by regenerating tissue. The whole field of medicine is moving into regenerative medicine, Darrow told CNSNews.com.

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