Bones, cartilage and muscles were grown from a single stem cell

Anna Govorova, Infox.ru

Bioengineers from the University of California managed to obtain somites from human pluripotent stem cells for the first time – formations from which bones, cartilage and skeletal muscles are formed in the embryo, reports Infox.

This is a very important achievement, because in the future it will allow creating tissues and treating patients with muscular dystrophy. For example, with Duchenne myodystrophy – a serious and almost incurable disease so far.

It is known that all chordates have somites, including humans. Therefore, scientists decided to study the process of their formation in animals. They did indeed discover several signaling molecules. But when they tried to turn human pluripotent stem cells into somites with their help, nothing happened.

As further experiment showed, other signaling molecules work in the human body.

When the authors already used them, the transformation process went well: pluripotent stem cells turned into somites. Then, in a Petri dish, cells of skeletal muscles, bones and cartilage were formed from these somites.

Cells of cartilage, bones and muscles grown from somite cells (from left to right).
A snapshot from the UCLA researchers press release turn stem cells into somites,
precursors to skeletal muscle, cartilage and bone – VM.

The process took only four days. At the same time, 90% of stem cells became somites. This is a good result, the authors say.

They report their results in a new issue of the journal (Cell Reports, Xi et al., In Vivo Human Somitogenesis Guides Somite Development from hPSCs – VM).

It should be added that more recently, muscle cells have also been obtained from human pluripotent stem cells. A team of bioengineers led by specialists from Harvard University managed to achieve this. The scientists repeated the same experiment on human embryonic stem cells and in this case also achieved a good result.

As for bone tissue, one of the promising methods of obtaining it is printing on a 3D bioprinter. Thermoplastics, silicone or collagen are usually used for this. Scientists are already able to print bones and cartilage of a given size. With their help, new drugs are tested and injuries are treated. But so far these are single operations.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru  09.02.2017