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Discovery may make it easier to develop life-saving stem cells


This article in ScienceBlog.com hints that we are getting closer to the illusive CRF's spoken about in this blog. Needless to say, I am very exciting about any work relating to reprogramming for I feel that two major problems could be solved by this: stem cell creation which the article mentions and which will be routine in transplantation medicine, and, not mentioned by the article but of equal importance, is the ability to reprogram cancer cells to a more innocuous phenotype or, at least, a non-invasive one.



This quote is from the article, "The researchers say that the genes ASF1A and OCT4 work in tandem with a ligand, a hormone-like substance that also is produced in the oocyte called GDF9, to facilitate the reprogramming process. 'We believe that ASF1A and GDF9 are two players among many others that remain to be discovered which are part of the cellular-reprogramming process,' Cibelli said."







This technique is more involved than the apparently discredited acid bath for iPSC creation that has been in the news of late, but I still believe that those researchers were onto something.

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