Chinese scientists have found a new method to induce stem cells

Beijing. April 10. Silkroadnews - Chinese scientists have made a breakthrough in creating stem cells with a cocktail of two chemicals that can induce mature somatic cells to turn back into pluripotent stem cells, Xinhua reports.
A study by scientists from the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health of the Chinese Academy of Sciences will help understand how the cell assignment is formed and can be applied to regenerative medicine, lead researcher Pei Duanqing said.
Scientists around the world are looking for “keys” that will allow people to regrow tissues or organs lost due to illness or injury, just as a gecko can regrow a tail.
Stem cells can self-renew or multiply while maintaining the potential to develop into other types of cells. They can become cells of the blood, heart, bones, skin, muscle, brain or other body parts. They are valuable research tools and might, in future, be used to treat a wide range of ailments, the report says.
The issue is how to get enough stem cells. Scientists around the world have tried different methods of inducing somatic cells into stem cells. Japanese Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka used the virus as the basis to generate induced stem cells, but this method is believed to have a high risk of causing cancer.
Chinese scientists have spent five years developing a method of chemical induction, which is more efficient, simpler and safer.
“The fate of cells is determined by the chromatin structure in the nucleus of cells. We use small molecular chemicals to reprogram the somatic cells by manipulating the chromatin structure from the somatic cell pattern to stem cell pattern,” the agency quoted saying by Liu Jing, a member of the research group.
Soaking various somatic cells in chemicals can induce them to become pluripotent stem cells, including the hepatic cell, which is difficult to reprogram by other methods, Liu added.
The study is published in the latest issue of the Cell Stem Cell journal.