Other News Cells from testicles act similar to embryonic stem cells
By Sue Mueller
Oct 11, 2008 - 12:06:25 PM
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Saturday October 11, 2008 (foodconsumer.org) -- German
researchers found that cells taken from men's testicles could be used to grow
certain types of adult cells or tissues, making it possible for scientists to sidestep
the controversy over use of human embryonic stem cell research.
In the Oct. 8 early online edition of the journal Nature,
Thomas Skutella, professor at the Center for Regenerative Biology and Medicine
in Tuebingen in Germany and colleagues reported that they succeeded in isolating
and growing the testicular cells into specific adult cells.
Early studies have shown that spermatogonial cells from
the testes of mice behaved like embryonic stem cells and could be tricked to
grow into certain types of adult cells.
The current study is the first of its kind to
show that men also have the same stuff like mice have to offer.
The cells used in the study were taken from biopsied
tissue from 22 men ages from 17 to 81. The researchers found it took only a few
weeks for the cells to differentiate into various types of cells.
Skutella and colleagues could only turn the germline
cells into a number of adult cells, but not other types. And also the cells used
were taken from whole testes although the researchers said part of a testis may
also be functional.
"It's exciting. We could do it for males; that
leaves women without as easy a method," stem cell scientist George Daley
of Children's Hospital in Boston and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute was quoted
by theAssociatePress as saying.
Early, Japanese scientists have found that skin cells may
act like embryonic stem cells and be use to growing certain types of adult
cells. But the method involves use of a virus that may integrate itself into
the DNA in the cells resulting in cancer-causing mutation.
Skutella’s method can not only solve this problem, but
also have another advantage over the method based on skill cells. That is, the spermatogonial
cells can be taken from a patient and growed into adult cells or tissue and then
transplanted in the same patient without fearing the body rejecting the transplanted
tissue.
Skutella was cited y news media as saying that women's
egg cells may also function like cells from male testicles in terms to be used
to grow cells.