Japanese Doctors Turn Fat into Liver Cells
Posted on: Monday, 8 January 2007, 21:00 CST
Japanese researchers successfully created liver cells from subcutaneous fat, which they say could lead to a regenerative technique to repair human livers.
The researchers extracted subcutaneous fat from patients. From the fat tissues, they extracted stem cells thought capable of changing into different cells that make up organs or other issues, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua said.
The researchers added growth-inducing proteins. After incubating for about 40 days, nearly all of the cells turned into hepatic cells, the National Cancer Center Research Institute and the International Medical Center of Japan said.
Doctors said the detected proteins and a drug-metabolizing enzyme known to be synthesized only in the human liver.
To make the finding clinically applicable, researchers said they would have to determine a way to mass-produce the liver cells.
Source: United Press International
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