By University of Arizona Health Services –
One of the biggest barriers to regenerative medicine is immunological rejection by the recipient, a problem researchers at the University of Arizona Health Sciences are one step closer to solving after genetically modifying pluripotent stem cells to evade immune recognition. The study “Engineering Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Lines to Evade Xenogeneic Transplantation Barriers” was published in Stem Cell Reports today.
Pluripotent stem cells can turn into any type of cell in the body. The findings offer a viable path forward for pluripotent stem cell-based therapies to restore tissues that are lost in diseases such as Type 1 diabetes or macular degeneration.
“There has been a lot of excitement for decades around the field of pluripotent stem cells and regenerative medicine,” said principal investigator Deepta Bhattacharya, PhD, a professor in the UArizona College of Medicine – Tucson’s Department of Immunobiology.