Source: Monash University
Date: 15 May 2011
Summary:
For the first time, scientists at Monash University's Immunology and Stem Cell Laboratories (MISCL) have shown that they can make human stem cells from healthy adult kidneys without working on human embryos, circumventing ethical concerns around this research. For the challenging project, which was published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, the Monash researchers started with healthy adult kidney cells, which they reprogrammed back to an embryonic-like state, then compared these kidney stem cells with off-the-shelf embryonic stem cells, and showed that both could form different embryonic tissue types, with their genetic features preserved.
