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FROM: Yomiuri Shimbun ( A Major Newspaper in Japan) March 31, 2004 Major Breakthrough Made in Embryo Stem Cell Research A Japanese research team has become the first in the world to grow structurally complete capillary blood vessels from human embryonic stem cells, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned Monday. The team, led by Prof. Kazuwa Nakao of Kyoto University's Graduate School of Medicine, used capillary precursor cells generated from stem cells imported from Australia in 2002 to grow capillaries in a test tube earlier this year. Unlike other cells, embryonic stem cells have the capacity to develop into any other kind of cell, such as cells that make up entire organs, and the latest announcement signals that stem cell research has entered a new stage. Researchers had until now only managed to regenerate nerve cells and muscle tissue, which are not sufficient to produce entire organs. Nakao's team's specific achievement has been the creation of capillaries that consist of stratified endothelial cells, which form capillaries' inner surfaces, and smooth muscle cells, which form their outer surfaces. This is an advance on results obtained in 2002 by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., who managed to form structures that resembled capillaries in terms of their shape, and that, like capillaries, also channeled blood, but differed from capillaries in terms of their cell structure, by injecting stem cells into a mouse. Nakao's team now plans to check whether the capillaries they have grown can be used to treat the symptoms of heart attacks and strokes by transplanting them into mice suffering from hardened arteries. Posted on CAMR website: http://www.camradvocacy.org/fastaction/news.asp?id=833 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn