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Asked by paperclipmadness to Anzy, Aoife, Dave, Matt, Tomasz on 17 Nov 2013.
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David Christensen answered on 17 Nov 2013:
Yes it could. Recently some scientists did this in mice to see what would happen. By using the same ideas they use when they reprogram adult cells to become iPS cells, they were able to reprogram cells throughout the bodies of mice. This caused a lot of tumours called teratomas to form around the bodies of the mice. They were able to reprogram cells in the mice by making custom-made mice in which they could switch on the reprogramming genes to make the cells into iPS cells. This means that we would not be able to do exactly the same thing in humans.
If we could use other methods and we could accurately aim at a few cells, then maybe we could make adult cells into stem cells safely by just changing a small number of cells to help regeneration after injury or to replace poorly functioning cells in disease. I don’t think this will be possible for a long time to come because it would be so risky at the moment and a lot of work would be needed to find out how to only reprogram a small number of cells safely.
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Matthew Tomlinson answered on 18 Nov 2013:
Just to add to what Dave has said, there are some people who are trying to use targeted gene therapy to try and change just a few cells so that they produce more bone than normal. This works by putting small pieces of DNA called plasmids into the place you want to change, you can then use things like sound waves to get the cells to take up the DNA, but only where the sound wave is directed. This changes the cells because the protein the plasmid DNA codes for is made by them, increasing the amount of bone they make. This technology could potentially be used to try and turn a small, targeted number of cells into stem cells, although it will take many years of trials before this could be tried in humans.
Comments
paperclipmadness commented on :
They always pick on the mice !!!