Stem Cell therapy Can Help Regenerate Parathyroid
Success is taking high parameters. University of Michigan researchers a step closer to parathyroid gland transplants that could one day prevent a currently untreatable form of bone loss associated with thyroid surgery.
The scientists were able to induce embryonic stem cells to differentiate into parathyroid cells that produced a hormone essential to maintaining bone density.
We used human embryonic stem cells as a model for ways to work out the recipe to make parathyroid cells,” says Gerard M. Doherty, M.D., chief of endocrine surgery and Norman W. Thompson Professor of Endocrine Surgery at U-M Medical School.
Doherty’s team used embryonic stem cells from a Bush administration-approved embryonic stem cell line to test a way to produce functioning, differentiated parathyroid cells to transplant into a patient and restore function.
With the recipe worked out, Doherty’s team anticipates developing a treatment that doesn’t use embryonic stem cells.
“We anticipate taking a person’s own cells and making them into parathyroid cells,” Doherty says. Using the patient’s own cells should eliminate the risk of rejection.
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