Skin stem cells provide greater potential for cures
Adult Skin
The British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, reports that scientists are working on research that will expand the use of skin cells beyond skin grafts for burn victims that may be the answer for curing a broad range of conditions, from cancer to spinal cord repair.
Sheila MacNeil, Professor of Tissue Engineering at the University of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England states, “There is the potential to take a biopsy of skin from a patient with disease, culture the cells, alter them to make them grow into tissues you are interested in and also use them to study the basis of the genetic disease and then to design therapies that you can put back into the patient.”
Professor MacNeil added that the adult stem cells were less likely to be rejected as they are from the donor’s own body, unlike stem cells from embryos.
The University of Sheffield is a leading research university and ranked 40th in the World’s Top 100 Universities by one study.
At Michigan State University’s Cellular Reprogramming Laboratory researchers are conducting studies on transforming ordinary skin cells into “anything” cells, known as pluripotent cells. The research team at the Laboratory takes adult human skin cells and converts them to a stem cell type known as Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells. They then grow these cells under conditions that push the cells to adopt a new identity as cells of specific types, such as neurons.
One of the benefits of using skin is that it is the largest organ of the body – adults carry around 8 pounds and 22 square feet of it.