Adult stem cells can at least make blood

They were hailed as an “ethical” alternative to embryonic stem cells – adult stem cells that can turn into any of the body’s tissues. Doubts have grown, but now a prominent sceptic has shown that one claim seems true: they can form all of the cell types found in blood.

Catherine Verfaillie and colleagues at the University of Minnesota, US, described the "multipotent" adult progenitor cells (MAPCs) in 2002. Isolated from mammalian bone marrow, they belonged to a class called mesenchymal stem cells, which normally form muscle and bone. However, MAPCs seemed much more versatile, able to form any of the body’s tissues (see Is this the one?).

Other teams have since struggled to repeat the results (see Stem cells' miracle postponed). But now Verfaillie has teamed up with Irving Weissman of Stanford University in California, US, to transplant MAPCs into mice that had been irradiated, wiping out their haematopoetic stem cells (HSCs) – another class of marrow cells that give rise to blood. “From the beginning I was very, very sceptical that MAPCs could contribute to blood formation,” says Weissman.

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