Week 3: Growing Organs and Stem Cells

Can stem cells function with stress and how is cancer related?

Tanya and I researched this question and discovered that in an experiment on mice they increased environmental stress factors for example reduced the presence of sulphate. This environmental stress factor made the cells function less well and made it prone to mutations. We know that if we increase cells that are mature into iSPCs these cells are still as however old they were before reengineering. This means they reach the hay-flick limit faster and they are also more prone to mutations on genes. This is why 1/3 of the mice showed developments of cancer because their cells, which were more prone to mutations, developed mutations on the proto-onco genes that regulate the checkpoints for mitosis. Mitosis was essentially left open ended because the checkpoints didn't function because of mutations.

We watched a Ted talk which was done by this researcher Anthony Atala. He and his team discovered a groundbreaking treatment. When a tissue is damage essentially they take cells from healthy tissue and generate them outside of the body and insert them with a scaffolding. They condition these tissue cells to do functions before like expand and contract so they are useful, which is really cool. They can also instead of creating a new scaffolding. They can take an organ for another human and wash it off it's cells with detergent and then coat it with new cells from the patient and it will be least likely to reject.