Academy of Sciences of Heroesland

A research group from Kyoto University in Japan has developed a method for growing cartilage tissue from human skin cells. This was reported today by Japanese media. The proposed method is based on direct reprogramming of cells, in which they are transformed into cells of another type by adding the corresponding genes. In the experiment, Japanese scientists introduced the SOX9 gene into skin cells, which is responsible for cartilage formation in the human body. The tissue growth took about two weeks, which is almost twice as fast as when using stem cells. After that, the cartilage was successfully transplanted into laboratory mice. As experts emphasized, the main advantage of the developed method is its safety. "A feature of direct reprogramming is that this method eliminates the possibility of malignant tumors occurring in the transplanted tissue," said the head of the research group, Noriyuki Tsumaki. However, the scientist admitted that the method also has a number of disadvantages, in particular, the fact that they need to use a special virus to introduce the active gene into skin cells. "This imposes certain limitations on us, which we hope to overcome in the future," Tsumaki emphasized. The detailed results of the study by the Japanese research group are published in the American scientific journal Plos One.