9/06/2011 PERMALINK
Stem cell 'breakthrough' promises to regenerate colon damage due to aging or disease. In what researchers call a crucial advance towards regenerative medicine, Human colon stem cells have been identified and grown in the lab for the first time by researchers of the Colorectal Cancer Lab at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona.
Throughout life, stem cells of the colon regenerate the inner layer of our large intestine in a weekly basis. For decades scientists had evidences of the existence of these cells yet their identity remained elusive. Scientists led by the ICREA Professor and researcher Eduard Batlle have discovered the precise localization of the stem cells in the human colon and worked out a method that allows their isolation and in vitro expansion (propagation in lab-plates). Batlle's team has established the conditions for maintain living human colon stem cells (CoSCs) outside of the human body: "This is the first time that it has been possible to grow single CoSCs in lab-plates and to derive human intestinal stem cell lines in defined conditions in a lab setting," explains the IRB Barcelona researcher Peter Jung, first author of the study together with Toshiro Sato, from the University Medical Center Utrecht in The Netherlands.