Complexity Digest 2004.41 - 04.01

11-Oct-2004

Stem Cells Pump Out Healing Molecules, Nature News Bookmark and Share

Excerpt:
Proteins from embryonic stem cells saved embryos that would otherwise have died from a heart defect.
© Science
The cells must have pumped some kind of heart-repairing substance into the mother's bloodstream, which travelled across the placenta into the babies and directed their heart cells to grow normally. (...)

The team showed that both of these molecules together have the potential to entirely reverse the growing animal's heart problem. They injected just 15 healthy embryonic stem cells, which were making both IGF-1 and WNT5a, into mutant embryos. The babies that developed from the embryos were close to normal.