Blood from stem cells
Biologists have learned how to create blood from human stem cells
Biologists from Boston have developed a technique for turning "reprogrammed" stem cells into blanks of blood cells, which opens the way for the treatment of diseases and the creation of "endless" donor stocks, according to an article published in the journal Nature (Sugimura et al., Haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells from human pluripotent stem cells).
"This discovery makes it possible to take cells from patients suffering from genetic blood diseases, change their genes and create full-fledged blood cells. In addition, now we will be able to create an inexhaustible source of blood and its stem cells using the cells of people with the first blood group. This will help us save the lives of those who need urgent blood transfusions," said Ryohichi Sugimura from Harvard University (in a press release Approaching a decades–old goal: Making blood stem cells from patients' own cells - VM).
Over the past two decades, biologists have learned how to turn stem cells into tissues of bones, muscles, skin and the nervous system. Such tissues can become "spare parts" in case of damage to the body or medicine for a number of degenerative diseases. For example, stem neuron cultures can become a means to treat Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, and other versions of them will help restore lost limbs or organs.
In particular, in April 2012, scientists were able to turn stem cells into hair follicles and successfully transplanted them to the back of the head of "bald" mice. Last year and the year before, Japanese scientists collected full-fledged copies of various organs, such as kidneys or liver, from stem cells, and also grew a rat's leg and "connected" it to the rodent's body. All these experiments are still being conducted on animals, but in the coming years similar experiments will begin on human cells.
Sugimura and his colleagues added blood to the number of such tissues, having learned how to turn embryonic or reprogrammed stem cells into blanks of all types of blood cells. To do this, scientists tracked how bone marrow and primary blood cells arise inside mouse embryos, and then tried to repeat this process in human stem cell culture.
These experiments helped scientists to isolate 26 different hormones and other signaling molecules involved in the process of cell formation, and to test the effect of each of them on stem cells and germ cells. After going through several combinations, biologists found that the combination of only seven such substances – ERG, HOXA5, HOXA9, HOXA10, LCOR, RUNX1 and SPI1 – allows you to turn stem cells into future blood cells.
Having grown cultures of such cells, scientists implanted them into the body of mice deprived of the immune system, and followed their further development. As experiments have shown, the "blanks" have successfully turned into erythrocytes, lymphocytes, T- and B-cells and other blood components.
Now scientists are working on creating safer versions of this technology that do not require the use of retroviruses to include seven genes responsible for the transformation of stem cells into blood cells. Their creation, according to the authors of the article, will open a new century in medicine and in the study of diseases associated with genetic defects in blood cells.
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18.05.2017