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Scientists in the US have successfully grown a functioning prostate gland from stem cells in mice, providing further evidence that the same technique could once be used to re-grow diseased or damaged tissues and organs in humans.
Prof Malcolm Alison, Professor of Stem Cell Biology, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, said:
“Scientists at a Biotechnology Company in California have found that a single mouse prostate cell bearing a cell surface marker, CD117, a growth factor receptor also found on blood stem cells, can generate a whole functioning prostate gland. Very rare, similarly marked cells were also found in human prostate glands, but their ability to form whole new prostates has not yet been tested.
“The prostate gland provides a life-supportive fluid for sperm, but whether you need to regenerate a new prostate is a moot point, since the prostate simply gives the aging male population serious medical problems. However, it is a widely held view that cancers originate from normal stem cells, so this discovery will be a significant boost to prostate cancer research aimed at understanding how this deadly disease, that kills over 10,000 men a year in the UK, develops.”
Prof Robin Lovell-Badge, MRC National Institute for Medical Research, said:
“This is a compelling and important study providing strong evidence not only for the presence of stem cells in the adult prostate, but a way to identify them. This extends the number of adult organs in which such tissue-specific stem cells have been found (including skin, brain, mammary glands, and the gut). The authors were able to generate new prostate glands from a single stem cell. Of course the main clinical problem with the prostate gland is not a need for additional ones, but their overgrowth, which often turns to prostate cancer. However, knowing the identity of these stem cells may eventually allow the development of therapies that specifically target these cells in a way that keeps them under control.”