| ■ Scientists Use Wisdom Teeth to Create Stem Cells | 2008.08.25 |
| Japanese scientists have created stem cells from the wisdom teeth of a 10-year-old girl, an achievement that offers another method of supplying stem cells for research while avoiding the controversial use of embryos to create stem cells. "This is significant in two ways. One is that we can avoid the ethical issues of (embryo-derived) stem cells because wisdom teeth are destined to be thrown away anyway," team leader Hajime Ogushdi told Agence France Presse. "Also, we used teeth that had been extracted three years ago and had been preserved in a freezer. That means that it's easy for us to stock this source of stem cells." The researchers at the Japanese government-backed National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science extracted cells from the wisdom teeth and found that they turned into stem cells after being allowed to develop for 35 days. However, it will take many years of research before wisdom teeth-derived stem cells may be available for clinical use, said Ogushdi, AFP reported. |