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Drug may give cells a fresh start: A chemical could switch adult cells from one type to another.

"The cells treated with reversine switched off muscle-related genes and no longer gave rise to muscle cells, suggesting that they had dedifferentiated. When plied with particular chemicals, these cells then appeared to form fat or muscle cells."

What I think was happening is that reversine blocked the R factors that the muscle cells were using to establish contact with other cell types. "When plied with particular chemicals . . ." they switched on an earlier phenotype. I wonder what these particular chemicals were and if they could be used clinically to cause cancer cells to switch phenotypes.
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