By Mark Johnson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Aug. 5–A team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been awarded an $8.9 million federal grant to investigate the fundamental power of embryonic stem cells and cells that have been reprogrammed to an embryonic state: their ability to become any cell in the human body.
The Wisconsin grant was among three announced by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, one of the National Institutes of Health.
The grant follows November’s announcement that separate teams from UW and Japan had succeeded in reprogramming human skin cells back to an embryonic state, a landmark that may help to defuse much of the controversy surrounding research on human embryonic stem cells.
The reprogrammed cells, derived without the destruction of human embryos, share essential characteristics of embryonic stem cells: immortality and pluripotency, the ability to become all other cells in the human body.
“The basic theme (of the award) is pluripotency and reprogramming,” said James Thomson, one of the researchers awarded the grant and a professor of anatomy at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, who was the first to isolate human embryonic stem cells in 1998. Last year, he shared the reprogramming breakthrough with Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University and the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease.
“The Wisconsin team will conduct cutting-edge research to address some of the most fundamental questions about stem cells,” said Marion Zatz, the federal official overseeing the stem cell grants.
The Wisconsin project involves chemists and researchers from the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, the Genome Center of Wisconsin, the Morgridge Institute for Research and the Medical College of Wisconsin.
The grant will support the following three projects:
–A team led by UW chemist Josh Coon will detail the histone changes that occur as embryonic stem cells move down the developmental pathway on their way to more specific cell types, for example blood, liver or skin. Histones are key proteins responsible for compacting and packaging DNA and play a role in gene regulation.
–A group led by Thomson will focus on describing the chemical changes that occur as stem cells are exposed to growth factors and make this transition from the embryonic state to a specific cell type.
–A third group led by blood expert Igor Slukvin and Genome Center scientist Junying Yu, who led the reprogramming effort in Thomson’s lab, will examine how proteins found in embryonic stem cells act like genetic switches and reprogram blood cells back to an embryonic state.
Also, the grant will allow Coon and Lloyd Smith, a UW chemistry professor, to further develop mass spectrometry, a technique used to identify chemical composition.
The grant will help to build and refine methods for large-scale embryonic stem cell culture.
This will help researchers who need large quantities of the stem cells to study the proteins made by them and their interactions.
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