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SACRAMENTO (CBS13) The UC Davis Medical Center has the first lab in the country to find stem cells in an adult bladder.

Stem cells from humans have been turned into almost any other tissue in the body, said Dr. Eric Kurzrock from the UC Davis Institute for Regenerative Cures.

But Kurzrock says nobody has ever done it with a bladder and this research, now published in the Stem Cells Translational Medicine scientific journal, could be monumental for science.

You could potentially use bladder cells that we created to make a new bladder, Kurzrock said.

This could help children born with spina bifida, and adults with a diseased bladder or bladder cancer.

Before this revelation, a doctors only option was to use the intestine to make the bladder larger.

In this case, we could use an engineered bladder, Kurzrock said.

It took a team 10 years to publish the project, because as Kurzrock says roadblocks are just part of the research process.

Excerpt from:
UC Davis Researcher Spearheads Groundbreaking Stem Cell Find