SickKids Researchers Say Skin Is An Accessible Source Of Stem Cells
Posted December 4, 2009 2:31 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
You cut yourself. The wound heals.
It’s a biological event you probably don’t pay much attention to, but scientists at the Hospital for Sick Children have closely studied the process of how skin repairs itself and their findings could lead to some important medical developments.
The SickKids researchers are the first to discover a stem cell for the second layer of the skin, or dermis.
Stem cells are capable of regenerating themselves and making different types of cells. It was Canadian scientists Ernest McCulloch and Jim Till who first proved the existence of the cellular repair systems back in the 1960s.
The research team at SickKids says our skin is an accessible source of the important building blocks that can regenerate into non-skin cell types.
The SickKids study found a group of cells, called skin-derived precursors, or SKPs, act as the skin’s stem cells. The SKPs are responsible for maintaining the dermis, healing of wounds, and spur hair growth on the upper level of our skin, or epidermis.
The lead investigator, Dr. Freda Miller, and her team have been using these cells in their work on spinal cord injury.
“I think a lot of people in the field are hoping that one day we won’t even have to think about cell therapy and we will be able to harness the stem cells [in] our own tissues to repair the body,” Miller said in a statement. “Imagine if it would be possible to give someone a drug to recruit their own stem cells and thereby repair their tissues.”
