Scientists have managed to induce cells from pigs to transform into pluripotent stem cells – cells that, like embryonic stem cells, are capable of developing into any type of cell in the body.
It is the first time in the world that this has been achieved using somatic cells (cells that are not sperm or egg cells) from any animal with hooves (known as ungulates).
The implications of this achievement are far-reaching; the research could open the way to creating models for human genetic diseases, genetically engineering animals for organ transplants for humans, and for developing pigs that are resistant to diseases such as swine flu.
The work is the first research paper to be published online June 3 in the newly launched Journal of Molecular Cell Biology.
Dr Lei Xiao, who led the research, said: “To date, many efforts have been made to establish ungulate pluripotent embryonic stem cells from early embryos without success. This is the first report in the world of the creation of domesticated ungulate pluripotent stem cells. Therefore, it is entirely new, very important and has a number of applications for both human and animal health.”
Dr Xiao, who heads the stem cell lab at the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology (Shanghai, China), and colleagues succeeded in generating induced pluripotent stem cells by using transcription factors to reprogramme cells taken from a pig’s ear and bone marrow. After the cocktail of reprogramming factors had been introduced into the cells via a virus, the cells changed and developed in the laboratory into colonies of embryonic-like stem cells. Further tests confirmed that they were, in fact, stem cells capable of differentiating into the cell types that make up the three layers in an embryo – endoderm, mesoderm and ectoderm – a quality that all embryonic stem cells have. The information gained from successfully inducing pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) means that it will be much easier for researchers to go on to develop embryonic stem cells (ES cells) that originate from pig or other ungulate embryos.