Stem cells cure sickle cell in mice

BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Dec. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say they have developed a new stem cell technique that successfully treats sickle cell anemia in mice.

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., used induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which uses skin cells and does not require embryos, UAB said Friday in a release.

The findings, published in Science Express Online, are the first to use the iPS technique to treat disease in an animal model, the university said.

"The UAB/Whitehead teams took skin cells from mouse models genetically engineered to have sickle cell disease and reprogrammed them into iPS cells by adding four genes to each cell," said senior author Tim M. Townes of UAB. "The new genes remodeled the chromosomes that instruct a skin cell to be a skin cell, so that the cells revert to stem cells."

Townes and co-senior author Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute said it is the first example of creating iPS cells derived from a disease model and using these cells to correct a genetic mutation and treat a disease.