Create germ cells to treat 10 difficult to treat disorders

Harvard scientists have just created germ cells for 10 genetic disorders. This allows you to look at the diseases that develop in a lab dish. This achievement, using a new technique, helps promote efforts to find solutions to treat some of the most difficult to treat diseases.

Researchers also claim that they have plans to create many cell lines available to help the research of some other scientists.

GS. George Daley and colleagues at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute used normal skin and bone marrow cells from people suffering from a number of different diseases such as Parkinson, Huntington and Down to produce germ cells.

Doug Melton, one of the Institute's leaders, said the new cells will allow researchers to observe the development of the disease on a plate, thereby helping to find out which process is developing properly. , which process is wrong. "I think in the coming years we will see that this technique really opens a door to new treatments for degenerative diseases," he said.

This technique loads new programs into cells, providing them with some of the most pronounced properties of embryonic stem cells, capable of getting into all kinds of tissues like the heart, nerve and brain.

With embryonic stem cells, scientists hope to speed up the process of medical research.

Diagram illustrating cell lines directly generated by patients ALS.(Photo: Reuters)

In November 2007, the research team in Wisconsin and Japan were the first to report that they had introduced the new program into skin cells, and one more thing was that these cells acted as cells. germ cells in lab experiments.

Last week, a group of other Harvard University scientists said they had put the new program into the skin cells of two elderly patients with muscular sclerosis (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis - ALS, also called Lou Gehrig's disease and feeding them into neurons.

Melton said these specialized new cell lines ' represent a set of degenerative diseases, diseases that still do not have effective treatments and, more importantly, no animal has shown edema. with research ".

He also said they have built a new laboratory, used as a place to store cells, provided to other scientists studying the diseases mentioned above.

GS. Daley said he expects germ cell lines to be developed for more diseases, and stressed: 'This is just the first wave of illness'. Many other diseases that scientists have just created germ cells of Type 1, or children, diabetes; 2 types of muscular dystrophy, Gaucher disease and a rare genetic disorder known as 'Bubble Boy Disease' .

Daley stressed that the cells loaded with the new program did not eliminate the need or value for studying embryonic stem cells.