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Breakthrough in Australian Stem Cell Research
Melbourne researchers have achieved an international scientific breakthrough by isolating large numbers of brain stem cells which can grow into new tissue and muscle.
The research, published in the international journal, Nature, could move some stem cell research away from the controversial use of embryonic stem cells.
Scientists see massive potential in embryonic stem cells because they can grow into a variety of mature cells. It was not known if mature brain stem cells could do this too.
Now researchers at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, have finally isolated large numbers of neural stem cells from mice.
The head of the neurobiology group, Perry Bartlett, says they have also unequivocally shown the adult stem cells can become other types of cells.
"It's really taken us this last nine or 10 years to be able to find what the cell looks like, and having found, we can now look at ways of being able to stimulate it into making new nerve cells with the possibility of replacing damaged or lost nerve cells in the adult brain," he said.
"It's important in the sense that there's been a debate about whether stem cells from adult tissues, whether that be brain or blood or elsewhere, do have the potential of embryonic stem cells to give rise to various tissues.
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