Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison
Date: February 4, 2011
Summary:
By coaxing healthy and diseased human bone marrow to become embryonic-like stem cells, a team of Wisconsin scientists has laid the groundwork for observing the onset of the blood cancer leukemia in the laboratory dish. Human bone marrow cells were coaxed to become pluripotent, all-purpose stem cells (right) in a new study by a team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell researcher Igor Slukvin, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health. Slukvin’s group turned banked healthy and diseased human bone marrow into blank-slate stem cells, which have potential use in therapy and could become a powerful laboratory model, as the new induced cells made from diseased marrow carry the same genetic mutations that cause the blood cancer chronic myeloid leukemia. The research was reported today in the journal Blood.
