Regenerative medicine is one of the most promising areas of science. Its essence, if simplified, is to grow new organs and tissues from the patient's own cells, which will exclude such a serious complication as transplant rejection. Scientists from the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences have achieved significant success in this area. According to an article published in the journal Scientific Reports, they managed to solve one of the most significant problems: the accumulation of errors in genetic material during stem cell division.
As the researchers suggest, errors associated with poor-quality production of artificial stem cells were caused by the fact that during the division process the work of microRNA was not taken into account. microRNAs are small, non-coding molecules of ribonucleic acid. They influence the process of cell transformation. The stages of the process of stem cell division to create tissues can already be implemented in practice, however, errors accumulate at each of the steps, which makes it impossible to fully use the technology. According to the press service of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, “We studied the influence of microRNA on how the process of transformation of a cell into a pluripotent stem cell proceeds. For this, we took from the same rat line three groups of cells: differentiated cells extracted from skin tissue; embryonic stem cells (naturally occurring) and induced pluripotent stem cells artificially created from fibroblasts. We isolated microRNAs from each of the groups and compared them. The results are very interesting."
It turned out that artificially obtained stem cells have little difference from natural cells in terms of the microRNA profile. Moreover, scientists managed to find several more microRNAs, which were previously unknown to science.
Based on materials from RIA Novosti
VLADIMIR KUZNETSOV