PARIS: Scientists on Wednesday reported a simple way to turn animal cells back to a youthful, neutral state, a feat hailed as a "game-changer" in the quest to grow transplant tissue in the lab.

The research, reported in the journal Nature, could be the third great advance in stem cells -- a futuristic field that aims to reverse Alzheimer's, cancer and other crippling or lethal diseases.

The latest breakthrough comes from Japan, as did its predecessor which earned its inventor a Nobel Prize.

The new approach, provided it overcomes safety hurdles, could smash cost and technical barriers in stem-cell research, said independent commentators.

"If it works in man, this could be the game-changer that ultimately makes a wide range of cell therapies available using the patient's own cells as starting material," said Chris Mason, a professor of regenerative medicine at University College London.

"The age of personalised medicine will have arrived."

Stem cells are primitive cells that, as they grow, differentiate into the various specialised cells that make up the different organs -- the brain, the heart, the kidney and so on.

The goal is to create stem cells in the lab and nudge them to grow into these differentiated cells, thus replenishing organs damaged by disease or accident.

One of the obstacles, though, is ensuring that these transplanted cells are not attacked as alien by the body's immune system.

To achieve that, the stem cells would have to carry the patient's own genetic code, to identify them as friendly.

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Stem cells in "revolutionary" boost

BOSTON, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- Scientists have stumbled upon a simple way to create stem cells without embryos -- by bathing healthy adult cells in an acid bath for 30 minutes.

A team of researchers from Boston and Japan were able to transform mature blood cells from mice into the equivalent of stem cells by introducing them to an acidic environment. This is the first time that stem cells have been created without having to introduce outside DNA into the cells.

"The fate of adult cells can be drastically converted by exposing mature cells to an external stress or injury. This finding has the potential to reduce the need to utilize both embryonic stem cells and DNA-manipulated iPS cells," said senior author Charles Vacanti.

The latest development, published in the journal Nature, could be used to create stems cells easily and quickly. Stem cells are known to become other kinds of cells, and have the potential to regenerate injured parts of the body. Embryos are a controversial source of such cells, though more are under study, including Nobel-winning research in 2006 that showed skin cells could be genetically reprogrammed to become stem cells.

The researchers aren't sure how this happens, but have hypothesized that it could be due to hidden cell functions that are triggered by external stimuli.

Researchers are now attempting to use the same method to convert human blood cells and believe that if successful it could be used in not only regenerative treatment but cancer treatment as well.

"If we can work out the mechanisms by which differentiation states are maintained and lost, it could open up a wide range of possibilities for new research and applications using living cells," said first author Haruko Obokata, of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology.

[Brigham and Women's Hospital] [RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology] [Nature]

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Scientists find faster, easier way to create stem cells

PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say they used epithelial stem cells to regenerate different cell types of human skin and hair follicles that may help those going bald.

Dr. Xiaowei "George" Xu, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine and dermatology at the Perelman School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, said they started with human skin cells called dermal fibroblasts.

By adding three genes, they converted those cells into induced pluripotent stem cells, which have the capability to differentiate into any cell types in the body. They then converted the induced pluripotent stem cells into epithelial stem cells, normally found at the bulge of hair follicles.

Starting with procedures other research teams had previously worked out to convert induced pluripotent stem cells into keratinocytes, Xu's team demonstrated that by carefully controlling the timing of the growth factors the cells received, they could force the induced pluripotent stem cells to generate large numbers of epithelial stem cells.

The team succeeded in turning more than 25 percent of the induced pluripotent stem cells into epithelial stem cells in 18 days.

Those cells were then purified using the proteins they expressed on their surfaces.

"This is the first time anyone has made scalable amounts of epithelial stem cells that are capable of generating the epithelial component of hair follicles," Xu said in a statement. "And those cells have many potential applications including wound healing, cosmetics and hair regeneration."

The findings were published in Nature Communications.

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Hair-follicle generating stem cells may help with baldness

Claims for a new, simple, technique to create stem cells.

A new report in Nature claims that bathing cells from an adult mouse in a simple acid solution turns them into potent and versatile stem cells.

The advance, carried out by the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, suggests that it may be far easier than anticipated to reprogram adult cells, possibly opening up new avenues in regenerative medicine. Scientists have long anticipated being able to grow tissues or organs using just a few cells from a patient.

Cells capable of growing and being manipulated in the lab, while retaining the ability to form a complete animal, were discovered in 1981, after being culled from mouse embryos. Then in 2006 work that later won a Nobel Prize, Japanese researchers found a way to induce any adult cell into a similar embryonic state by introducing just four genes. The resulting cells are known as iPS cells.

The new result indicates that much the same result occurs simply by subjecting cells to the stress of an acid bath.

That may provide far simpler ways to make stem cells. But the finding is so surprising that the authors said they had difficulty convincing other scientists and getting their paper published. Everyone said it was an artefact there were some really hard days, HarukoObokata, a stem cell biologist who carried out the project told Nature news.

Stem cell research has previously been troubled both by outright fraud and results that turned out to be incorrect. The latest work, which got its start several years ago in the laboratory of Charles Vacanti, a tissue engineer at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston, was slow to progress for that reason. Our lab was pretty ridiculed, Vacanti told the Boston Globe.

The researchers next need to show the technique works with human cells. Until you show it works in humans, its hard to know what the application is going to be, William Lowry, a developmental biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles told the Associated Press. For now, the question of whether its a lab curiosity or a big medical benefit, thats still up in the air.

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Stressful Research Turns Cells into Stem Cells

Professor Austin Smith of Cambridge University, writing in the Journal Nature said the new cells could be seen as a blank slate from which any cell could emerge depending on its environment.

Remarkably, instead of triggering cell death or tumour growth as might be expected, a new cell state emerges that exhibits and unprecedented potential for differentiation into every possible cell type, he said.

The discovery has been hailed as incredible by scientists who believe it will speed up the advancement of personalised medicine.

Stem cells offer the possibility of a renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat diseases including Alzheimer's, spinal cord injury, stroke, heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis.

They could be used to regenerate organs, stimulate the growth of new blood vessels, or create skin grafts.

(This) approach in the mouse is the most simple, lowest cost and quickest method to generate pluripotent cells from mature cells, said Professor Chris Mason, Chair of Regenerative Medicine Bioprocessing, at University College London.

If it works in man, this could be the game changer that ultimately makes a wide range of cell therapies available using the patients own cells as starting material the age of personalised medicine would have finally arrived.

Who would have thought that to reprogram adult cells to an embryonic stem cell-like (pluripotent) state just required a small amount of acid for less than half an hour an incredible discovery.

Professor Mason said the development was likely to speed up the development of technology in everyday clinical practice although warned that was still years away.

Dr Dusko Ilic, Reader in Stem Cell Science, Kings College London, said the findings were revolutionary.

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'Stem cells' created in less than 30 minutes in 'groundbreaking' discovery