This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 7:59 pm and is filed under Bone Marrow Transplantation, Embryonic Stem Cells, Geron, Stem Cells. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Scientists are working on human somatic cells to make them pluripotent, essentially give them the same qualities of an embryonic stem cell. These induced pluripotent cells have all the factors that characterize human embryonic stem cells. Pluripotent means these cells have the ability to become any of the three primary germ layers.
Some of the uses for this kind of cell would be study and development of new disease models, transplantation medicine applications and new drug development. One of the big challenges with and embryonic stem cell is trying to control the mutations because one of the true test for and embryonic stem cell is that if will produce a teratoma tumor when injected under the skin.
