NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Scientists have been able to coax a type of cell found in blood into several different types of specialized cells, including white blood cells, neuronal cells and liver cells.
Because such stem cells "can be easily gathered from a patient's own blood supply and be stored in liquid nitrogen, our studies suggest that they may be valuable candidates for transplantation therapies," Dr. Eliezer Huberman told Reuters Health.
The next step for Huberman's team is to see whether transplants of the cells can treat disease in mice.
The cells are a long way from clinical use, but it may be possible to use the cells to replenish immune cells wiped out by cancer therapy, according to the report. The cells may also hold promise for restoring neurological damage caused by spinal cord injury, stroke, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia.
The findings are published in the advance online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
According to the report, Huberman and colleagues at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois collected a type of white blood cell known as a monocyte from blood samples.
After treating the cells with a growth factor, a subset of the cells had some of the characteristics of pluripotent stem cells, or those immature cells that can give rise to all other types.
Treating this subset of cells with other growth factors resulted in a variety of cell types, including two types of immune cells, the kind of cells that line blood vessels as well as nerve and liver cells.
Traditionally, stem cells found in blood and bone marrow were thought to only have the potential to become the wide variety of cells found in the blood and immune system. The most versatile and abundant source of pluripotent stem cells is an embryo.
Assuming that these blood cells indeed turn out to be the more versatile type of stem cells, blood could become an easily accessible and less controversial source of stem cells, according to the report.
The study was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health.