Chinese researchers make mice from skin cells

By david Liu (davidl@foodconsumer.org)

Chinese researchers reported last week that they characterized certain stem cells from reprogrammed skin cells that they used to successfully produce mice.

In a paper published Thursday in the journal Cell Stem Cell, the researchers said one iPS cell line produced an unusually high level of chimerism when spiked into blastocysts (an early embryo) , a unique characteristic that has not been found in other iPS cell lines.

Dr. Shaorong Gao, lead author of the study, at the National Institute of Biological Sciences in Beijing said researchers have been trying to find whether certain iPS cells or induced pluripotent stem cells are fully pluripotent and resemble the embryonic stem cells (ESCs) that can be trained to grow into all types of cells or organs.

Dr. Gao and colleagues actually made a few of mice out of the so-called stem cells and one of them was able to grow into adulthood while others died after birth because the surrogate mother mouse refused to feed them.

Gao was quoted by Xinhua as saying "Although these findings are an important proof of principle, it would be premature to make claims about whether iPS cells in general are functionally equivalent to normal ESCs."

But he said the reprogramming method may one day eliminate the need for embryonic stem cells to produce potential therapies. Harvesting embryonic stem cells involves embryo destruction.

The same findings were also reported in the British journal Nature by Professor Zhou Qi from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Professor Fanyi Zeng from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, according to Xinhua.