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Multipotential Adult Progenitor Cell - A Remarkable Advancement in StemCell Research


Ever since the research on "cloning" created excitement (or flutter)amongst scientific community, there have always been different arguments in favour of and against the research in this concept. Fearing that cloning research would lead to more harm/chaos than what it is projected for, even non-scientists raised objections to this research. Whereas the scientific community assured the world that the advancement in stem cell research would help in curing chronic diseases (heart/brain/liver/skin)for which the medical world does not have an answer.

What is a stem cell?

Before the disclosure by Catherine M Verfaillie, a scientist from University of Minnesota about her discovery of "adult stem cells", scientists could do the stem cell research using only the "embryonic stem cells". Embryonic stem cells are more new cells for one specific tissue. This was the drawback of adult stem cells and precisely for this reason, embryonic stem cells attracted much attention as they are more versatile than the adult stem cells known to scientists before this new invention.

However, the recent invention by Verfaillie claims that the new adult stem cell can turn into many different types of cells. The new invention is about a particular adult stem cell isolated from the bone marrow. This can be converted into cells of the heart muscle, brain, liver, or skin depending on which tissues need to be repaired. This can be extracted from the bone marrow of the patient and it does not need to be from anybody else's marrow or from an embryo. This is the significance of this new invention.

More importantly, this particular adult stem cell from bone marrow show a striking property with embryonic stem cells. The potency/versatility of this adult stem cell need to be established vis avis the embryonic stem cells as mentioned earlier. It must be interesstem cells maintain the various tissues of the adult body.

There are hypothesis around this discovery. A section of scientist say that a small population of embryonic stem cells lingers on in the adult, morphing into various types of adult stem cells as needed. Another section of scientists feel that somehow the scientist who discovered this new adult stem cell in bone marrow could have succeeded in reprogramming the cells back to a semi-embryonic state and that is why they show such a remarkable versatility. The inventor calls it as "multipotential adult progenitor cell" and does not want to call them as "ultimate stem cell". She acknowledged that these adult stem cells has some of the markers characteristic of embryonic stem cells. For more details on this invention, readers are advised to go through an article on this in a recent issue of New Scientist.


(courtesy: NYT News Service & New Scientist)

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