These smart stem cells may be the promising hope for healing from various injuries and diseases. But, the research is still in its beginnings.
The team of researchers succeeded in reprogramming human fat cells into adaptive cells called smart stem cells.
These cells are capable of staying inactive in the body until the need for healing emerges. The effectiveness of the cells in healing damaged tissue was shown in a lab study done with mice.
Adaptable & Healing Smart Stem Cells
In order to make these stem cells, the team of experts from UNSW Sydney exposed human fat cells to a specific mixture of compounds.
In three and a half weeks, the cells lost their original identity and started acting like stem cells of iMS which stands for induced multipotent stem cells.
According to UNSW hematologist John Pimanda, these cells are highly adaptable to their surroundings and heal various damaged tissues. Pimanda explains that to his knowledge, no one before has been able to create adaptive human multipotent stem cells. And, it’s therefore still an unexplored territory.
The next step they did was injecting the experimental iMS cells into the healthy mice in order to check the response of the cells.
They concluded that the cells were inactive for some time and that they activated when the mice were injured. The smart stem cells successfully transformed into the necessary tissue (bone tissue, skin tissue, heart tissue, etc.) to start the animal’s healing process.
Smart Stem Cells That Act Like Chameleons
According to the lead author of the study, Avani Yeola, these stem cells acted like chameleons. They followed the cues necessary to blend into the tissue which needed to be healed.
Pimanda explains that their idea was to reverse these modifications, i.e. they wanted the cells to be able to use that part of the DNA if a signal was coming outside of the cell.
Smart stem cells are responsive to their environment and capable of transforming into any tissue such as a multipotent stem cell. And, these cells will have multiple uses.
What’s in the Future for These Powerful Smart Stem Cells?
The experts explain that in the future, it may become possible for doctors to take a fat cell from a patient, incubate it with the compound, and inject it back into the patient in order to promote the healing of bone trauma or heart damage.
Still, though, these are applications that will require years and maybe decades to become a reality.
This team will also have to conduct additional research to prove this method is safe for humans for various types of trauma before it could become used as actual therapy.
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