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A single human cardiomyocyte grown using a method devised by UW-Madison chemical and biological engineering graduate student Xiaojun Lian. Cardiomyocytes, the workhorse muscle cells of the heart, can now be grown cheaply and abundantly in the lab, thanks to the new method devised by Lian and his colleagues.
Image credit: Xiaojun Lian |
Stem cells are cells found in the body that have the capability to transform itself into any type of biological cell in the body.
In terms of human stem cells, these cells can be made into various human cells and tissues. This technology has great potential to treat otherwise untreatable diseases and conditions. Stem cells can repair and even replace diseased cells in organs and tissues. It can even assist in organ regeneration.
Stem cells are taken from human embryos about four or five days after fertilization. That stage of the embryo is called the late blastocyst stage.
The blastocyst contains three distinct areas:
- Trophoblast - surrounding outer layer that later becomes the placenta
- Blastocoel - fluid-filled cavity within the blastocyst
- Embryoblast - the inner cell mass which can become the embryo or fetus.
Embryonic stem cells can be created from cells taken from the inner cell mass Because these cells are taken from such an early stage in development, they have the ability to become cells of any tissue type (except for the whole embryo itself), making them pluripotent.
Pluripotent cells are cells that has the potential to differentiate into any of the three cell groupings or germ layers:
- Endoderm (interior stomach lining, gastrointestinal tract, the lungs)
- Mesoderm (muscle, bone, blood, urogenital)
- Ectoderm (epidermal tissues and nervous system).
Because of the manner that stem cells are procured, arguments have been raised on the morality of sacrificing an embryo for disease research and treatment.
New stem cell technique promises abundance of key heart cells
Cardiomyocytes, the workhorse cells that make up the beating heart, can now be made cheaply and abundantly in the laboratory.
Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of Wisconsin scientists describes a way to transform human stem cells -- both embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells -- into the critical heart muscle cells by simple manipulation of one key developmental pathway. The technique promises a uniform, inexpensive and far more efficient alternative to the complex bath of serum or growth factors now used to nudge blank slate stem cells to become specialized heart cells.
"Our protocol is more efficient and robust," explains Sean Palecek, the senior author of the new report and a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of chemical and biological engineering. "We have been able to reliably generate greater than 80 percent cardiomyocytes in the final population while other methods produce about 30 percent cardiomyocytes with high batch-to-batch variability."
