A new technique for producing stem cells that has been hailed as "breakthrough" actually produces stem cells that cause cancer in organisms that grow from them.
Two different teams of scientists announced a new technique for developing stem cells in the same month. In an article published in the online edition of the journal Cell, Dr. Shinya Yamanaka and colleagues said that they had transformed human skin cells into stem cells by using a virus to inject the skin cells with four specific genes.
At roughly the same time, a team of researchers from the
While less controversial, the stem cells produced by the new technique appear to be carcinogenic. When Yamanaka's team implanted the cells into mouse embryos, those embryos developed as expected -- with the DNA of the original stem cell, not of the embryo. But mice cloned in this fashion eventually developed neck tumors.
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New Stem Cell "Breakthrough" Actually Results in Growth of Cancer Cells
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