Dec 7, 2007 / 09:24 am
Researchers said on Thursday that they had proven in principle a new type of stem cell could be used as therapy after they used the cells to treat mice with sickle cell anemia, Reuters reports.
A team at the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts used stem cells created from skin cells to treat mice engineered to have sickle cell anemia, a blood disease caused by a defect in a single gene.
The pioneering technique avoids using embryonic stem cells, which are produced by cloning an adult cell and then destroying the resulting embryo.
"This is the first evaluation of these cells for therapy," said Dr. Jacob Hanna, who worked on the study. "The field has been working for years on strategies to generate customized stem cells," he added in a telephone interview.