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Published online 7 August 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1025
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Ten diseases in a dish
Disease-specific cell lines will help the study and treatment of medical conditions.
It is “the beginning of studying thousands of diseases in a Petri dish,” according to researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who have reprogrammed cells from patients with a wide range of diseases into stem cells. They promise to provide these stem-cell lines — cultures of constantly-dividing cells — “virtually free” to researchers across the world.
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Another possible problem is that the disease causing mutations may not be present. There has been speculation for example that diabetes may have a genetic component that is post-zygotic and may be present in the islet cells but not in, say, skin cells.