Why are researchers interested in developing disease-specific or patient-specific pluripotent stem cells?
The development of patient-specific or disease-specific pluripotent stem cells has great therapeutic promise for three reasons. Firstly, these cells could provide a powerful new tool for studying the basis of human disease and for discovering new drugs. Secondly, the resulting embryonic stem cells could be developed into a needed cell type, and if transplanted into the original donor, would be recognized as ‘self’, thereby avoiding the problems of rejection and immunosuppression that occur with transplants from unrelated donors.
Related Questions
- Why do researchers need embryonic stem cells now that they can reprogram adult skin cells to create induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, which mimic embryonic stem cells?
- Why are researchers interested in developing disease-specific or patient-specific pluripotent stem cells?
- What are pluripotent stem cells?
