Washington, Sept. 12 (ANI): Researchers were able to make adult cells from a living organism retreat in their evolutionary development to recover the characteristics of embryonic stem cells.
The team from Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) have also discovered that these embryonic stem cells, obtained directly from the inside of the organism, have a broader capacity for differentiation than those obtained via in vitro culture.
Specifically, they have the characteristics of totipotent cells: a primitive state never before obtained in a laboratory.
The study, led by Manuel Serrano, the director of the Molecular Oncology Programme and head of the Tumoural Suppression Laboratory generated these cells within an organism.
Maria Abad, the lead author of the article and a researcher in Serrano's group, said that this change of direction in development has never been observed in nature and they have demonstrated that they can also obtain embryonic stem cells in adult organisms and not only in the laboratory.
Serrano said that they can now start to think about methods for inducing regeneration locally and in a transitory manner for a particular damaged tissue.
Stem cells obtained in mice also show totipotent characteristics never generated in a laboratory, equivalent to those present in human embryos at the 72-hour stage of development, when they are composed of just 16 cells. (ANI)