Creating new cells for disease modeling
Posted February 15, 2012
Josh Thompson
Most people think of stem cells as offering a cure to one’s disease or reversing an injury that they, or someone they know, have sustained throughout their lifetime.
Today, there are several types of stem cells: adult stem cells, embryonic stem cells, and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). Adult stem cells are found in an adult’s body and are responsible for regenerating a specific type of cell. For example, a satellite cell or muscle stem cell is responsible for regenerating muscle tissue.
Embryonic stem cells are derived from an embryo that has been fertilized in a clinic and then donated to a lab for research purposes. Embryonic stem cells are said to be “pluripotent,” meaning they can give rise to all of the different types of cells in the body.
Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are created from adult cells and then genetically reprogrammed to an embryonic stem cell-like state. These types of cells offer great hope for drug development and modeling of diseases. Recently, scientists who study hepatitis C and Parkinson’s disease have been able to use these cells to their advantage.
Hepatitis C (HCV) is an infectious disease that leads to inflammation of the liver. As with most diseases, HCV has different levels of severity in patients and scientists believe that this could be related to genetic differences in patients.
Now, researchers from MIT, Rockefeller University and the Medical College of Wisconsin have come up with a way to produce liver-like cells and infect them with HCV. This study could advance HCV research and give researchers insight on why some people are able to clear the infection and why others have difficulty with clearing HCV.
Eventually, researchers and physicians hope to create patient specific treatments by taking an infected patient’s cells, transforming them into liver-like cells, and then seeing which treatment they respond best to.
Scientists from the University of Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences have created exact replicas of human brain cells with Parkinson’s diseases for the first time. Parkinson’s disease is a disorder of the brain that causes people to have uncontrollable shaking and difficulty with walking, movement, and coordination.
Now, these scientists will be able to study these types of brain cells that were, before the study, inaccessible because of their location in the brain.
iPSCs offer great hope for modeling of diseases and are giving scientists a new way to study disease progression and treatment.
Citations
Sources:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/hepatitis-liver-like-cells-0201.html
Image:
http://www.thepi.org/brprojectspatientspecificdtl/
