Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Testicular cells may help reduce use of embryonic stem cells

The number of human embryos needed for medical research could be greatly reduced following the announcement yesterday that doctors have found that testicular cells can turn into a wide range of other types found in the body.

...a forthcoming study in the journal Nature will describe how a team in Germany, where [human] embryo research is forbidden, has successfully isolated highly flexible stem cells from adult mouse testes that exhibit properties similar to embryonic stem cells.
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The team which reports the advance, led by Prof Gerd Hasenfuss of the Georg-August-University of Goettingen, show that the testis cells are remarkably flexible: capable of forming all three "germ layers" - the basic three cellular layers, ectoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm - from which the body's organs and tissues develop.
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