脂肪干细胞再造新心肌细胞
美国休士顿的德州大学研究团队,日前成功的将人类皮下组织的脂肪干细胞与大鼠的心肌细胞做融和,不仅形成新的心肌细胞,还可以造成心脏的跳动.这项发现已刊登在FASEB期刊中.
将脂肪干细胞与心肌细胞融合,产生多核的细胞,将这细胞继续做培养,发现新的心肌细胞会跳动,这可以用来弥补因心肌梗塞所导致的受损心肌,并且无基因改造的问题.
动物实验的成功,接下来可以利用相同方式,应用在人类身上,希望这个技术可以取代传统的心脏移植手术,以再生心脏组织做治疗.
Scientists fuse human fat stem cells with rat cardiomyocytes to form new muscles
According to new research published online in The FASEB Journal scientists have successfully fused human stem cells derived from subcutaneous adipose (fat) tissue with muscle cells from rat hearts. Not only did these cells "talk" to form new muscle cells altogether, but they actually beat.
"Recovery of regenerative cells located in the stromal vascular fraction of a patient's own subcutaneous tissue is relatively simple and can be used for self-healing," said Christopher Alt, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Department of Molecular Pathology at the University of Texas in Houston. "A patient's quality of life can be improved by application of those recovered regenerative cells to the heart, as well as to bone, tendons, non-healing wounds and joints."
Using newborn rats, scientists studied the combination of rat heart muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) and human adipose (fat) stem cells derived from human subcutaneous adipose tissue. They found that the two fused and formed new heart muscle cells with several nuclei. When kept in a culture environment, these cells beat. These new cells exhibited an ability to compensate for a loss of cardiomyocytes as following a myocardial infarction, via fusion with cardiomyocytes. Furthermore, this study shows that contrary to previous findings suggesting that genetic modification of certain embryonic genes in adult stem cells is required as a prerequisite for turning into heart cells, the human stem cells used in this study were not genetically modified.
"Much work is still ahead before this method can be applied to humans, but the hope is that this technique might eventually make heart transplants unnecessary," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "This study not only shows the power of stem cell fusion technology, but also that cardiac regeneration is on the horizon."