Tue Feb 24, 2009 5:23pm EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Researchers said on Tuesday they had made a type of nerve cell out of ordinary skin cells in a new approach to stem cell research.
They made motor neurons out of induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells — a type of cell made from ordinary skin cells that resembles human embryonic stem cells (only in that they can become any kind of cell in the body. iPS cells are NOT embryonic cells! They are adult stem cells that are similar to embryonic only in their pluripotency. This is a good thing. – dg).
Scientists hope that iPS cells might offer a substitute for embryonic stem cells and a short-cut to tailored medical therapy for a range of diseases.
Motor neurons make muscles contract, and being able to make new motor neurons might help treat diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, the team at the University of California Los Angeles reported.
“IPS-derived cells appeared to follow a normal developmental progression associated with motor neuron formation,” they wrote in the journal Stem Cells…