US researchers said on Saturday they had transformed immature cells from men's testicles into powerful stem cells, which they then coaxed into becoming nerve, heart and bone cells.
Their work has not been assessed by standard peer-review processes, but was presented at a meeting of stem cell researchers in Valencia, Spain. If other researchers can duplicate their efforts, the study offers a possible new source of valuable stem cells.
The researchers, at Irvine, California-based PrimeGen Biotech, worked with immature cells found in testes and ovaries known as germ cells. Scientists have hoped to use germ cells as a source of tissues for transplant and other medical uses.
The findings are certain to be scrutinised before they are accepted. Earlier this year, South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-Suk was disgraced for having faked two studies in which he claimed to have cloned human volunteers and used the resulting embryos as a source of embryonic stem cells.
Last week, Gerd Hasenfuss of Georg-August-University in Goettingen, Germany and colleagues reported in the journal Nature that they had transformed mouse germ cells into stem cells. Francisco Silva and colleagues said they had accomplished the same thing, and taken it several steps further by doing the same thing with human germ cells.
"Germ cells isolated from adult human testis can be therapeutically reprogrammed to have the ability to differentiate into cells that can be used therapeutically for cell-based regenerative medicine," they wrote for a presentation at the meeting in Spain.
"We've already been able to reproducibly differentiate heart, brain, bone and cartilage cells, and we are excited to begin testing how these cells incorporate into tissues," Mr Silva said in a statement. Stem cells are the body's master cells, and scientists are working to learn how to find and use them to replace tissue, to grow new organs, and to study diseases.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200604/s1606585.htm
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