Director of the Stem Cell Network in New South Wales, Australia.
"Cell therapies are being developed for treatment of disorders such as diabetes, liver disease and Parkinson’s Disease, conditions where individual cells that have been destroyed might be replaced with surrogate cells of a similar type, that are developed from stem cells.
"Replacing organs, for example, an eye or a kidney, is a much more difficult scenario because there are multiple different cell types, that need to integrate correctly with one another in a 3D environment.
"Our knowledge of what different cell types interact during development and when these interactions occur is only beginning to be understood.
"This manuscript describes the creation of the basics of a very primitive eye (“optic cup”) in the laboratory, with the series of interactions between the various developing cell types that make up the eye occurring spontaneously once the initial steps were induced.
"Initiating the process required aggregates of mouse embryonic stem cells growing in a specific type of culture medium to be placed on a supportive matrix of proteins in the laboratory.
"The message from this manuscript is that if appropriate stimuli are provided to embryonic stem cells in the laboratory, organ development can begin to be induced.
"Whilst what was described relates to the eye, it is theoretically possible the same outcomes might be achieved with other organs using different stimuli. Whether the primitive optic cup that was formed can mature and differentiate all the cell components of an adult eye is unknown, but this manuscript raises the hope that this might be possible one day.”
"The message from this manuscript is that if appropriate stimuli are provided to embryonic stem cells in the laboratory, organ development can begin to be induced.
"Whilst what was described relates to the eye, it is theoretically possible the same outcomes might be achieved with other organs using different stimuli. Whether the primitive optic cup that was formed can mature and differentiate all the cell components of an adult eye is unknown, but this manuscript raises the hope that this might be possible one day.”
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