Is the next trendy all-natural cure. . . Dog pee… !??!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
After an injury, your damaged tissues need repair. The same goes for our furry friends! However, veterinary medicine struggles to grow cells for treating severe injuries. Inside the body, most cells have set jobs and resist new functions. What can be done?
Enter Masaya Tsukamoto and team from Osaka Metropolitan University in Japan. Their goal was to grow NEW tissues.
Researchers gathered cells from, well, dog urine. They added six chemical factors to these cells to reprogram them into cells called iPSCs. Emphasis on PEE!
iPSCs were formerly mature cells which are reverted to stem cells, giving them a blank slate! Their growth can be directed into different tissue types, like hair follicle cells and respiratory cells.
With this new, easier technique, researchers could quickly generate lots of iPSCs!
Maybe one day your vet will use your pup’s pee to grow new tissues. But for now, I’m still cleaning up Rover’s… iPSC’s …PEE-yoo!
Reference: Tsukamoto, M. et al. Generation of canine induced pluripotent stem cells under feeder-free conditions using Sendai virus vector encoding six canine reprogramming factors. Stem Cell Reports (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stemcr.2023.11.010