Interspecific Blastocyst complementation: Clone your organs!
Human organs may be grown in pigs
Kirill Stasevich, Compulenta
The idea of growing human organs for transplants, it seems, was obviously doomed to exist only on the pages of fiction: to grow a human embryo in order to then take away his liver or kidneys, even if for transplantation to a terminally ill person, would not allow any doctor in the world. And, nevertheless, it was still possible to find a workaround: at the conference of the European Society of Human Genetics Researchers, Professor Hiromitsu Nakauchi from the University of Tokyo (Japan) said that human organs can be grown in a pig.
The method described by Professor Nakauchi, the researchers called blastocyst complementation. During the experiment, samples of rat cells were taken, which turned into induced pluripotent stem cells — an analogue of embryonic stem cells that can give rise to cells of any tissue and organ. These induced stem cells were injected into a mouse embryo that had the ability to form a pancreas turned off. The injection of rat stem cells was carried out at the blastocyst stage, one of the earliest stages of embryonic development, when the embryo has not even been implanted into the uterine wall. Mice that developed from such an embryo showed no signs of diabetes: their pancreas was formed from rat stem cells. Rat cells took the place in the embryo that the mouse's own cells should have taken; according to the researchers, in this way, if not all, then most of the organs can be formed.
"Graphic Abstract" to an article by the Nakauchi Group published in Cell magazine in September 2010
Generation of Rat Pancreas in Mouse by Interspecific Blastocyst Injection of Pluripotent Stem Cells (VM).
The idea of blastocyst complementation has been in the air for a long time, but no one knew if such a focus between two different species was feasible. Now Japanese researchers using the same technique want to check how other organs will be formed in the embryo of an animal of a different species. If the researchers are lucky, it will produce a real revolution in medicine: why suffer with the treatment of the same diabetes, if the diseased pancreas can be replaced with a healthy one grown in an animal from your own cells?
At the same time, experiments are already underway to inject human blood stem cells into a pig embryo in order to obtain an adult animal with real human blood.
Prepared by The Telegraph: Pigs could grow human organs in stem cell breakthrough.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru21.06.2011