Nowadays, stem cells are the most powerful resource of biomedicine. The UGR team, supervised by Prof Antonia Aránega Jiménez, started to go deeply into the study of stem cells from the umbilical cord of newborns months ago. Young research scientists Octavio Caba Pérez, Antonio Martínez Amat, Fernando Rodríguez Serrano and Houria Boulaiz have carried out several experiments to extract the so-called stem cells, about 0.01 % of the whole of the extracted cells.
In a second phase stem cell culture optimization will take place. In a third phase cell and myocardit cocultures will be carried out to observe how cells can become myocardits, have the same protein characterization.
Results are “specially interesting and very hopeful”, according to Professor Aránega. Stem cells could serve to regenerate heart tissues affected by myocardial infarct. There are three types of stem cells, also called truncal cells, according to their origin: embryonic, umbilical cord and adult.
Given the political problems research teams are facing to work with embryonic cells from spare embryos from assisted reproduction, which are the most powerful and can generate any human tissue, this team worked on umbilical cord cells, which are very powerful too according to several internacional studies.
Mothers´ collaboration
These UGR research is developing in the context of a European project presented the 14th of November 2003. They have collaborated closely with Doctor José Montoya Ventoso, of the Maternity Hospital of Granada. Mothers give their consent to transfer blood from the umbilical cord after the delivery. It would be worth pointing out that collaboration comes to 90% of cases.
In Aránega´s words, “such advances demonstrate researchers´ great potential in general and in the field of biomedicine in particular, as well as the contributions that the scientific Andalusian community is carrying out”.On the other hand, two of the collaborators in the New technologies applied to cardiovascular research research group will g oto the Karolinska Institute of Stockholm (Sweden) to continue their training in one of the most pretigious organizations in this field, with more than 300 scientists exclusively dedicated to the study of stem cells.
Further information:
Prof. Antonia Aránega Jiménez
Dpt of Human Anatomy and Embriology of the University of Granada.
Phone number: 958 24 35 34 / 243535.
E-mail: aranega@ugr.es
