Sunday, November 30, 2003
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE?
That's the by-line in SciScoop's article about research developments being announced by a company called TriStem. Here's the heart of the matter:
TriStem founder Ilham Abuljadayel says that by adapting standard culturing methods, she has managed to turn white blood cells into heart, nerve, bone, cartilage, smooth muscle, liver and pancreatic cells. If true, this is a stunning achievement that could lead to diverse treatments ranging from a cure to diabetes to liver regeneration to heart attack recovery to healing spinal cord injury.
If this turns out to be true, it's pretty much the holy grail of tissue engineering. It could eventually lead to realization of the ultimate dream of creating replacement organs from a patient's own cells, thus bypassing all the availability and immunological problems associated with current organ transplantation techniques. It also obviates all the ethical problems bio-conservatives have with using human embryonic stem cells as the starting point of tissue engineering.
Needless to say, the mad scientists I hang out with are intently interested. I'll be watching this item closely.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 10:05 AM
