PEOPLE whose lungs are damaged by diseases such as emphysema may one day have their lungs patched up with replacement tissue. Researchers in London said last week that they had for the first time created lung cells out of mouse embryonic stem cellsa primitive type of cell found in embryos that can become any other cell in the body.
Anne Bishop and her colleagues from the Imperial College Centre for Tissue Engineering in London, took some stem cells from a mouse embryo and left them to grow into clusters known as embryoid bodies. They then continued to grow these clusters in a standard medium which promotes the growth and maintenance of the epithelial cells lining the surface of the lungs.
After a few days, the growing cells began to differentiate into specialised types of cells. Some of them looked just like the cells lining the alveoli in the lungs. Bishop ...
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