国际英语资讯:Vitamin treatment unlocks door to stem cell therapies: New Zealand scientist_时事

国际英语资讯:Vitamin treatment unlocks door to stem cell therapies: New Zealand scientist

Vitamins A and C could improve the conversion of adult cells into stem cells, opening the way to advances in biomedical treatments for human diseases, according to a New Zealand-led study out Friday.

The research team discovered that the two vitamins complemented each other in erasing "memory" associated with DNA, an important effect for improving technologies geared towards regenerative medicine and stem cell therapy.

Ordinary adult cells, such as those in the skin or blood, could be artificially coerced in a culture dish to resemble embryos only a few days old, said study co-lead author Dr Tim Hore, of the University of Otago.

国际英语资讯:Vitamin treatment unlocks door to stem cell therapies: New Zealand scientist1

Since the 2006 discovery that reprogramming was possible, there had been much interest in using induced embryonic stem cells to cure human disease.

"However, hampering these efforts is the reality that adult cells are resistant to changes in their identity, partly because of chemical alterations to their DNA," Hore said in a statement.

These alterations, known as "DNA methylation," were acquired during development and provided a form of cellular memory that helped cells faithfully maintain a specialized function.

Removal of this memory was critical in order to create a developmentally potent stem cell, or to change one kind of adult cell to another.

With collaborators in the United Kingdom and Germany, Hore determined that adding vitamins A and C to culture dishes removed DNA methylation from embryonic stem cells.