韩国建国大学一研究团队日前成功地从人体伤口周边组织中提取到皮肤干细胞，此项成果有望推动干细胞研究加速发展。
此间媒体报道说，在一项共同研究中，建国大学的研究人员从剖腹产手术时产生的手术伤口组织中提取到干细胞，通过骨形态发生蛋白（bmp-4）增殖分化，成功获得了大量干细胞。
实验证明，使用该方法获得的干细胞能够成功被诱导分化为神经细胞。这些神经细胞将被用于自体干细胞移植和干细胞医疗等领域的后续实验。研究人员相信，提取自伤口组织的人体干细胞的分化能力同胚胎干细胞相当。
研究人员表示，将上述皮肤干细胞诱导分化为胰岛素分泌细胞的实验现已取得阶段性成果，下一步，他们将探索通过细胞移植治疗糖尿病的可行性。
此前，科学家已经在人体皮肤细胞中获得了成体干细胞，但提取效率低下，无法获得研究工作所需要的最低数量。
评论认为，此项即将发表在美国《组织工程学》杂志上的研究成果受到了学术界的广泛关注。使用胚胎干细胞进行克隆研究已引发大量伦理问题，胚胎干细胞还存在可获得性问题。从伤口组织提取干细胞的方法让大量获取皮肤干细胞成为可能，有望开启干细胞研究的新局面。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
Tissue Engineering Part C: Methods September 18, 2009 doi:10.1089/ten.TEC.2009.0275.
Skin-derived Stem Cells in Human Scar Tissues: A Novel Isolation and Proliferation Technique and Their Differentiation Potential to Neurogenic Progenitor Cells
Mr. Ji Hoon Yang Dr. Sang Woo Shim Prof. Bo Yon Lee Dr. Hoon Taek Lee, Prof
Adult tissues contain stem cells that can transdifferentiate into other cell lineages besides forming differentiated cells of their own tissue of origin. However, human adult skin-derived stem cells have a very low efficiency. Here, we established a novel culture system involving BMP-4 and a floating culture system with sphere producing medium (SPM) that can enrich adult stem cell populations in vitro. Adult stem cells were isolated from useless human scar tissue. Like mesenchymal stem cells, cultured human scar tissue-derived stem cells (hSTSCs) altered their morphology and significantly increased the number of Nestin-positive cells in proportion to the alkaline phosphatase-positive cell ratio. Moreover, the expression of the pluripotency regulator Oct-4 and its target transcripts, Sox-2, c-kit, and Rex-1, was also stimulated by this culture system. Differentiation of neurogenic progenitor cells using basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) and Neurogen 2 was successfully performed in vitro more rapidly than previous reports. Differentiation potential into three germ layer was also performed that our hSTSCs possessed differentiation potential into various cell type both cell and sphere. Neuronal differentiation results that our hSTSCs expressed marker of neurogenic genes, such as glial fibrillary acid protein, neural cell adhesion molecules (NCAM), neuron filament-M, and microtubule-associated protein 2. These results suggest that BMP-4 and the floating culture system with SPM induced significant proliferation of hSTSCs and mediated reprogramming of the cells from adult somatic tissue into precursor state to some degree. It is thought that this new culture system might be a simple, effective, and easily manageable process for regenerative tissue repair and autotransplantation.
