Scientists make breakthroughs in pluripotent stem cells

Chinese scientists reported in the US journal Science on July 18 that they used a very simple and safer method to make body cells into pluripotent stem cells, and used these cells to cultivate a number of healthy mice, one of which was named "Qingqing" just after its 100th birthday   The researchers said that this is a revolutionary research result, which provides an ideal cell source for cell therapy and even organ transplantation in the future, and will greatly promote the development of therapeutic cloning, that is, cloning tissues and organs for disease treatment   Mammalian cells have the pluripotency of differentiation into various types of tissues and organs only in the early stage of embryonic development, and will gradually lose this function as they grow into adult cells Human beings have been looking for ways to reverse the differentiated adult cells and make them regain the "pluripotency" similar to the early embryonic development   Previously, mammalian somatic cells were proved to be able to "reprogram" and obtain "pluripotency" by means of nuclear transfer of oocytes or introduction of foreign genes The two technologies jointly won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2012   The research team led by Professor Deng Hongkui and Dr Zhao Yang of the school of life sciences of Peking University developed this technology in a simpler and safer way They used only a combination of four small molecular compounds to process somatic cells, successfully reversed their "development clock" and gave them "multi potential"   Deng Hongkui told Xinhua News Agency: "using this technology, we have successfully induced the specialized mouse adult cells into" pluripotent "cells that can be re differentiated and developed into heart, liver, pancreas, skin, nerve and other tissue and cell types, and named them as" chemically induced pluripotent stem cells "
Deng Hongkui pointed out that this new method got rid of the dependence of the previous technology on oocytes and foreign genes, and avoided some doubts about the further application of reprogramming technology, such as the risk of embryo destruction or gene mutation   In the experiment, they used the new method to grow adult mouse lung fibroblasts into a mouse called "Qingqing" Deng Hongkui said: "at present, Qingqing has just completed its 100th birthday It is well-developed, healthy and lovely, and has had its' child ' Compared with the mice that were reprogrammed with transgenic technology, it can no longer worry about health risks such as the reactivation of foreign cancer genes "
The researchers say the new technology is surprising because it was thought that complex and rigorous differentiation and development could be reversed in such a simple way What's more interesting is that the early change process of this new pathway is similar to the molecular mechanism involved in the early regeneration process of lower animals   In addition, the research results will help people better understand the mechanism of cell fate determination and cell fate transformation, and make it possible for human beings to directly change cell fate in vivo through the use of small molecular compounds in the future In this way, the cell functions needed for disease treatment may be directly remodeled by small molecular compounds   "If this goal is achieved, many diseases that are difficult to treat will get new solutions, and the whole field of regenerative medicine will undergo new changes," Deng said