ARGONNE RESEARCHERS CREATE POWERFUL STEM CELLS FROM BLOOD

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ARGONNE RESEARCHERS CREATE POWERFUL STEM CELLS FROM BLOOD
24 February 2003 - DOE/Argonne National Laboratory

The particularly powerful, and very scarce, flexible forms of stem cells needed for medical research and treatment may now be both plentiful and simple to produce, with a new technology developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, and the source is as close as your own bloodstream.

These flexible stem cells, able to morph into a variety of cell types, are called "pluripotent," and before this Argonne research, they have been found only in fetal tissue, which is limited, and in bone marrow, which is difficult to collect. Pluripotent stem cells are important because they can generate all types of tissues found in the body, and the Argonne-developed technology can produce them from adult blood cells.

The finding may eventually offer researchers a practical alternative to the use of embryonic stem cells for research, drug discovery, and transplantation.

Argonne scientist Eliezer Huberman and his colleagues, Yong Zhao and David Glesne, examined adult monocytes, a type of white blood cells that act as precursors to macrophages. The researchers found that when monocytes were exposed to a growth factor, they created a set of pluripotent stem cells. After cultivating the stem cells, the scientists were able to make the cells differentiate into nerve, liver, and immune system tissue by delivering more growth factors.

"Because of its great promise in medicine, I'm prouder of this work than of anything else I've done," Huberman said.

The research is being published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Storing the precursor cells in liquid nitrogen had no effect on their differentiation later. Because monocytes can be easily gathered from a patient's own blood supply, the researchers suggest that treating disease with a genetic match to prevent rejection may be possible in the future.

This means that the material should produce valuable candidates for transplantation therapy, useful to replenish immune cells that have been eradicated by cancer therapy or to replace neuronal tissue damaged during spinal cord injury, stroke, Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease.

Funding for the research is from the National Institutes of Health. The researchers have applied for a patent on the new technology.

http://www.anl.gov

About: DOE/Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne National Laboratory is one of the US Department of Energy's largest research centres. It is also the nation's first national laboratory, chartered in 1946.

Argonne is a direct descendant of the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory, part of the World War Two Manhattan Project. After the war, Argonne was given the mission of developing nuclear reactors for peaceful purposes. Over the years, Argonne's research expanded to include many other areas of science, engineering and technology.

Today, the laboratory has about 4000 employees, including about 1200 scientists and engineers, of whom about 700 hold doctorate degrees.

Argonne occupies two sites. The Illinois site is surrounded by forest preserve about 25 miles southwest of Chicago's Loop. About 3200 of Argonne's 4000 employees work on the site's 1500 wooded acres. The site also houses the US Department of Energy's Chicago Operations Office.

Argonne-West occupies about 900 acres about 50 miles west of Idaho Falls in the Snake River Valley. It is the home of most of Argonne's major nuclear reactor research facilities. About 800 of Argonne's employees work there.

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