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TOKYO-A team of Kyoto University researchers have succeeded in reprogramming human skin cells to create induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, without using an oncogene, a cancer-inducing gene, the U.S. journal Nature Biotechnology said Friday in its online edition. The results show that researchers, led by Shinya Yamanaka, are now able to obtain iPS cells more safely. Up to now researchers have programmed four genes including an oncogene in skin cells to generate iPS cells, which have the potential to grow into various kinds of body cells.Although the researchers still employ viruses harmful to the human body, generating iPS cells without using an oncogene marks a step forward in the practical use of regenerative medicine to fix damaged tissue."The goal lies ahead. But we steadily move ahead step by step," said Yamanaka, a professor at the university's Institute for Frontier Medical Sciences who is renowned for being the world's first scientist to have created iPS cells.According to the study report in the U.S. journal, the researchers generated iPS cells by using skin cells from mice and human adults.In an experiment to reprogram mice skin cells with three genes, it took two to three weeks to generate iPS cells, more than twice as long as the conventional method using four genes.The new method also resulted in the generation of far fewer cells.In the report, Yamanaka and other researchers state that their future task is to advance studies so they can boost the effectiveness of the new method."It will be important to find factors or small molecules that can enhance the efficiency of iPS cell generation without Myc (oncogene) for the generation of disease- and patient-specific iPS cells," the report said.http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8T85VP81&show_article=1&catnum=0
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