Adult Stem Cells Isolated from Human Intestinal Tissue

Now this is very encouraging to say the least..Good reading everyone.

"Hot off the press" as OM would say. lol

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130404135157.htm

Steve

Excellent news, for sure. But yeah, it sounds like they've just figured out which markers are stem cell markers in the gut. That's an essential first step!

I want to emphasize to any non-science folks that stems cells are very difficult to work with for a lot of reasons. One reason they're so hard to work with, even if you can find the markers necessary to distinguish and isolate them, is that they reside in what's known as a stem cell niche. The niche is a location within the tissue that essentially maintains the stemness of the cells. Remove the cells from the niche, and they lose their stemness (either they start terminally differentiating or they just lose a lot of characteristics that make them stem cells).

So a lot of stem cell research right now is just figuring out what stem cells are like in their niches so we can prevent them from losing those characteristics when we remove them from the niche.

I love science, but I sometimes wish it were more cooperative!

@ScienceGirl - Does that mean that Athersys(Pfizer) has figured a way out to work with stem cells through their Multistem technology?

http://www.athersys.com/Home/ProductCandidates/MultiStemANovelStemCellTherapy/tabid/98/Default.aspx