In a breakthrough that may help fill a critical need in stem cell research and patient care, researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have demonstrated that skin cells found in human amniotic fluid can be efficiently "reprogrammed" to pluripotency, where they have characteristics similar to human embryonic stem cells that can develop into almost any type of cell in the human body. The study is online now and will appear in print in the next issue of the journal Cellular Reprogramming, to be published next month. Source: The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine - Discipline: Stem cells

"There remains today a need in stem cell research for an easily reprogrammable cell type," said the study's lead author, Dr. Katalin Polgar, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Cardiology and Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science, Mount Sinai School of Medicine. "Our study shows that reprogramming of cultured, terminally differentiated amniotic fluid cells results in pluripotent stem cells that are identical to human embryonic stem cells, and that it is much easier, faster and more efficient than reprogramming neonatal and adult cells."
"We induced amniotic fluid skin cells to return from their final differentiated stage back to an undifferentiated stem cell stage from where they can develop into any cell type of the body," said Dr. Polgar.
"These reprogrammed amniotic fluid cells are able to form, as embryonic stem cells can, three dimensional spheroid structures called 'embryoid bodies.' They also have the ability to self-renew themselves indefinitely. Pluripotent stem cells created from amniotic fluid cells shed from the fetal skin maintain all the potential of embryonic stem cells without using embryos, thereby eliminating ethical concerns associated with human embryonic stem cells obtained from preimplantation embryos," Dr. Polgar said.