An allegiance to Gare’s Balls

Men may have personal stem-cell trove
ANNE MCILROY
Globe and Mail Update
September 19, 2007 at 1:15 PM EDT
It is an idea that may make many men cross their legs. But researchers in the United States say stem cells harvested from a man's testicles could one day be used to repair his damaged heart, kidneys or even his brain.
The scientists have found a way to easily identify stem cells in the testicles of adult mice, and to coax them to become brain cells, muscle cells, heart cells, blood cells and even blood vessels. The next step is to see if they can do the same thing in humans.
The procedure would involve removing a small piece of testicle – about the same amount used for a biopsy.
”We don't need a lot of material,” said Marco Seandel, the lead author of a paper to be published today in the journal Nature and a stem cell researcher at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Maryland.
Their work – and that of a German team that is also experimenting with stem cells extracted from testicles – is part of a growing international effort to look beyond the embryo for cells that can give rise to all human body parts and systems.
Embryonic stem cells hold enormous promise for new therapies for dozens of diseases because they have an endless capacity for self renewal and can give rise to all the different cells that make up the body – skin, muscle, nerve, brain, blood and roughly 250 other specialized cells. Scientists are hoping to harness their regenerative powers to repair damaged tissue or organs.
But harvesting stem cells from embryos is controversial because the embryos are destroyed in the process.
Adults have small numbers of stem cells too – in bone marrow, muscle, and other tissues and organs. But they do not seem to have the same superhero-like powers as embryonic cells. Stem cells in muscle, for example, give rise only to new muscle cells.
A number of teams, however, have been trying to coax adult stem cells back to an embryonic state.
In June, researchers in the United States and Japan announced that they had done just that by inserting four genes into skin cells from adult mice.
Dr. Seandel and his colleagues did not reprogram the testicular stem cells with new genes. They put them in a special growth medium, and they were returned to a state in which they could turn into many different cell types – not just sperm cells.
The team has been hunting for stem cells in testicles for more than decade. Dr. Seandel said it seemed like an obvious place to look, because the testes produce sperm, which give rise to an entire human being if they fertilize an egg.