NATURE RESEARCH JOURNALS PRESS RELEASE
For papers published online on 28 October 2005. This press release is copyrighted to Nature Biotechnology.
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Embryonic stem cells turned into elusive endoderm
DOI: 10.1038/nbt1163
Researchers have turned human embryonic stem (hES) cells into a cell type
found in human embryos that ultimately forms the pancreas, liver, lungs, and
other organs. The ability to generate this primitive cell type - definitive
endoderm - is a critical step in the effort to transform hES cells into
certain mature cell types that scientists hope will serve as 'replacement
cells' to treat various diseases, such as type 1 diabetes or liver failure.
The study, by Baetge and colleagues, appears in December's Nature
Biotechnology.
HES cells have the potential to become any specialized cell type in the
body. This process happens naturally during development, but reproducing it
in the lab - for example, deciphering the complex set of signals that tells
a hES cell to become an insulin-producing pancreatic beta cell - is an
enormous scientific challenge. Definitive endoderm is one of the three
principal (germ) layers of cells in an embryo (in addition to ectoderm and
mesoderm), which arise at the very early stage of development known as
gastrulation. Understanding how to make definitive endoderm should pave the
way to complete differentiation of hES cells to mature endodermal cell
types, such as pancreatic beta cells or liver cells.
Author contact:
Dr. Emmanuel Baetge (CyThera Inc., San Diego, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 858 455 3555, E-mail: [email protected]
Additional contact for comment:
Patrick Tam (University of Sydney, Australia)
Tel: +61 2 9687 2800, E-mail: [email protected]
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