Research Center Reports Stem-Cell Breakthrough

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Pennington Biomedical Research Center scientists have found a way to convert stem cells in human fat to human bone cells when transplanted into a mouse.

While there is still much work to be done, Senior scientist Dr. Jeffrey Gimble said the breakthrough is an important step toward using stem cells for regenerative therapies.

The goal is that one day doctors could repair broken bones using stem cells donated by people who have gotten liposuction, he said.

Stem cells are the body’s building blocks and have the potential to become many different types of cells that could be used in medical treatments.

Gimble worked with Kevin Hicok and Dr. Lyndon Cooper at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and scientists from Chapel Hill-based Artecel Sciences, where he formerly worked. The group will have its findings published this week in the journal Tissue Engineering.

A Danish team has just reported similar observations in a paper appearing in the same issue, Gimble said. While the findings were quite similar, Gimble said both teams were working independently.

Researchers had already found that various signals in a growing animal can cause stem cells to develop into bone, nerve, muscle, fat and other tissue types and had achieved this in a test tube, Gimble said.

Gimble extracted human fat through liposuction, identified and extracted just the stem cells and multiplied them in the lab. He attached the growing stem cells onto a chip of artificial bone and implanted the chip under the skin of mice for six weeks. After removing the bone chip, Gimble found the stem cells had converted to living human bone cells and had begun to grow on their own.

“This is one step further along in the process of finding out what we can ask these cells to do,” he said.

That process, however, still contains many formidable steps. Gimble noted scientists need to make sure the bone cells can be generated in sufficient numbers to meet Federal Drug Administration guidelines; find a way to transplant the stem cells from one individual to another without compromising the recipient’s immune system; and figure out specifics such as how many stem cells would be needed to replace a certain amount of lost bone.

“A lot more work needs to be done,” he said.

The Pennington Biomedical Research Center is a branch of the Louisiana State University System focusing on the role of nutrition and diet in human health and disease.

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