Amniotic & Placental Stem Cells

Posted by Brenda Lane Jan 8, 2007

A combined team from Wake Forest, NC and Children's Hospital in Boston have discovered that cells from the amniotic fluid and placenta can regenerate into healthy tissue including brain, bone, muscle, and fat cells as well as blood vessels and liver cells. These cells in turn have been implanted into animals with diseased tissue and the cells regenerated into healthy tissue.

Study leader, Dr. Anthony Atala, says that it would only take about 100,000 women to donate stem cells from amniotic fluid in order to provide enough genetic diversity in stem cells that essentially every person in the US could potentially have a "match" to their own compatible tissue.

This is incredibly promising research, especially since it does not involve extracting the cells from embryos, thereby destroying them.

For a complete review of this study, see the Wake Forest University Institute for Regenerative Medicine web site.

Brenda