Dr Alok Srivastava (ISC '75) makes DNS proud

Vellore research centre makes stem cell breakthrough

VELLORE: It's a breakthrough that may have the country's medical and scientific community sitting up and taking notice. The Centre for Stem Cell Research at Christian Medical College has succeeded in reprogramming cells drawn from adult mice and making them function like stem cells found in the human embryo.

It has opened a new chapter in stem cell therapy in the country, as the technology can now be applied to generate similar stem cells from adult human cells too. These can be used to study genetic disorders relating to blood, muscle, brain and even diseases like diabetes. The use of embryos to draw stem cells has been the subject of a controversy, and the latest discovery may mean that embryos need not necessarily be used in the process.

''This is an important milestone for India in stem cell research and signifies a paradigm shift in the way diseases can be treated. We will now begin work on human cells to generate disease-specific iPS cells to study hereditary diseases,'' Dr Alok Srivastava, who heads the research centre, said...

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