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Two laboratories report a breakthrough that may one day allow full exploration of the potential benefits of human embryonic stem cell (ESC) therapy and that will eliminate the ethical objections.
In June 2007, Japanese and American teams reported that they had tricked fully differentiated mouse cells into becoming undifferentiated pluripotent cells with all the characteristics of mouse ESCs (Journal Watch Jun 21 2007). Now, just 5 months later, the Japanese team and another American team report the same feat with human cells. Both teams introduced four genes into differentiated cells using retroviral vectors. A small number of cells emerged that had all the biochemical markers of ESCs and that could differentiate into all three germ layers i…