When I raised the said question after finishing my story “UnderEstimate”, famous Sci-Fi writer Dr. Arvind Dubey (Lucknow, India) said :
Not twenty years from now, its in front of u . Pof Yamanaka
from Quoto university in Japan has done it. He introduced four transcription
factors in a normal cell of adult mice to convert it into an adult pleuripotant
cell, I mean a cell which can create a whole animal. What are these adult
pleuripotant cells, of course a micro body. If y any means it can be
transported to longer distances, Zeashan’s prophecy turns into a reality.
However his perception of micro body is different from this, so what, Jules Verne
was also having a different perception for the voyage to the moon, which later
turned into the reality later on. Well done Zeashan, congratulations.
Here is the original news
Shinya Yamanaka Reprograms Human Adult Cells
Into Embryonic-like Stem Cells
Breakthrough accelerates new avenues of stem cell research
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – November 20, 2007 – Acclaimed stem cell
researcher Shinya Yamanaka, MD, PhD, has reported that he and his Kyoto
University colleagues have successfully reprogrammed human adult cells to
function like pluripotent embryonic stem cells. Because it circumvents much of
the controversy and restrictions regarding generation of embryonic stem cells
from human embryos, this breakthrough, reported in the journal Cell, should
accelerate the pace of stem cell research.
Last year, Yamanaka, who is also a senior investigator at
the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease (GICD), reported that he and
his Kyoto colleagues had reprogrammed mouse skin cells into pluripotent stem
cells, laying the foundation to apply this methodology in human cells.
In this earlier work, published in Cell, Yamanaka and his
colleagues identified four genetic factors that resulted in the reprogramming
of adult mouse cells into induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells capable of
developing into any kind of cell. This summer, he reported in Nature that these
iPS cells could even form a new mouse, making them functionally the same as
embyonic stem cells. According to the new research, those same genetic factors
used with human adult cells resulted in iPS cells which are nearly
indistinguishable from human embryonic stem cells.
“The rapid application of this approach to human cells has
dramatically changed the landscape of stem cell science,” said GICD Director
Deepak Srivastava, MD. “Dr. Yamanaka's work is monumental in its importance to
the field of stem cell science and its potential impact on our ability to
accelerate the benefits of this technology to the bedside. Not only does this
discovery enable more research, it offers a new pathway to apply the benefits
of stem cells to human disease.”
“Dr. Yamanaka and his group have made yet another extremely
important contribution to the stem cell field,” said Richard Murphy, interim
president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). “Their
results open the door to generating alternative sources of pluripotent cells
from patients, which is a major step forward. However, much work still needs to
be done to fully characterize and understand the capacity of these induced
pluripotent cells to study and to treat human diseases.”
While Yamanaka's work would seem to eliminate the need for
controversial research on human embryos, both he and Srivastava emphasized that
research must continue. “We are still a long way from finding cures or
therapies from stem cells and we don’t know what processes will be effective,”
Yamanaka said.
CIRM's Murphy added, “Dr. Yamanaka's work, which uses viral
vectors to introduce into cells pluripotency- associated genes, further emphasizes
the critical need we have to continue working with naturally occurring human
embryonic stem cells, which remain the gold standard against which all
alternative sources of human pluripotent stem cells must be tested.”
According to Yamanaka, the next steps will be to understand
how these cells can be differentiated into other types of cells and ultimately
how they can be used to study disease models and as potential therapies. “We
are now finally in a position to make patient-specific stem cells for therapies
without fear of immune-rejection and to make disease-specific stem cells that
will reveal the underlying cause of many human diseases” he said.
Prof Shinya Yamanaka
Posts
