Question: Can embryonic stem cells in other mammals (not humans) be used for the development of human tissues and organs?

Anzy Miller answered on 11 Nov 2013:

Hi iyazmalik!

Great question!
So theres many ways to look at this: firstly, I work on mouse embryonic stem cells, and what we learn using these we hope will help us know more about how the human stem cells work (mice and humans share 97.5% of our working DNA- and so it allows us to make accurate predictions of human systems when working in mice). So because of this, any research we do in non humans, we believe will have some similarities to humans and so help us understand more about how everything works in humans. So for example we use mouse stem cells to make an organ – lets say a liver – and we learn how this process works and what the cells need to become a liver. This knowledge we can then use to try and do the same thing using human cells that we can transplant.

Secondly – there has been a lot of work to try and successfully transplant organs from non human mammals – in the hope that even without organ donations people can get new organs when they lose theirs. But there are a lot of problems with transplanting, for example, a pig organ into a human – the human body will normally reject it. However, scientists have been trying to make genetically modified pigs as an example where their organs wouldn’t be rejected.

Any so also, maybe we could make organs from stem cells in the lab that also wouldn’t be rejected… Although maybe better would be to make these organs from human stem cells, in particular from induced pluripotent stem cells (these stem cells can be made from e.g. the skin of a person) from the particular patient that needs the transplant – and then the organ definitely wouldn’t be rejected as the cells were from them originally.

Hope that answers your question!
Anzy