Diseases in A Dish

Human diseases are often hard to treat due to the regulations on human testing and the years of clinical research to get FDA approval. How ever there is a new technological breakthrough that is allowing the culturing of human cells in a petri-dish, so they can be experimented on. This is all possible by the newly developed induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells.

These iPs cells were recently developed by Shinya Yamanaka, a Japanese scientist who created them from taking ordinary cells and putting them through a process that allowed them to go back to a stem cell like phase. Stem cells are so important because they are harvested at a stage where they have the capability to grow into any type of cell in the body with the right manipulation. However, due to there source, unborn babies, they have been outlawed to use in several countries. So with this accomplishment, the use of embryonic stem cells has become obsolete. Scientists in Germany have recently used iPs cells to create cardiac tissue that has a pulse and beats on its own, within a petri-dish. Science can now continue on in an extraordinary way.



This break through is one that has immense potential in the scientific field. Shinya Yamanaka recently won the noble prize for his work with iPS cells and I believe it will allow research that will lead to many diseases being cured.  iPs cells will have tremendous value in the years to come, and they will be instrumental in our understanding of biology.