Scientist Claims New Reprogramming Technique Works in Human Cells, May Lead to Cloning

After the ground-breaking news last week that Japanese scientists were able reprogram adult cells to embryonic-like cells in mice by simply bathing them in weak acid, the next step was to try this with human cells. The technique is called "stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency", or STAP.With lightening speed, Dr. Charles Vacanti and his team at Harvard Medical School has announced that they have created STAP human cells. New Scientist has the story:Talk about speedy work. Hot on the heels of the news that simply dipping adult mouse cells in acid could turn them into cells with the potential to turn into any cell in the body, it appears that the same thing may have been done using human cells.The picture above, given to New Scientist by Charles Vacanti at Harvard Medical School, is said to be images of the first human "STAP cell" experiments.... Now, Vacanti and his colleagues say they have taken human fibroblast cells and tested several environmental stressors on them in an attempt to recreate human STAP cells. He won't reveal what type of stressors were applied but he says the resulting cells appears similar in form to the mouse STAP cells. His team is in the process of testing to see just how stem-cell-like these cells are.The Independent also reports that more tests are needed to see if these stem cells are for real:"The process was very similar to the one we used on mouse cells, but we used human dermal fibroblasts that we purchased comme...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: STAP stem cells Source Type: blogs