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Scientists Here Find Proteins Controlling Stem Cell Behaviour
Singapore
Straits Times
Singapore Press Holdings Limited
15 March 2006
NUS don leads team in 3-year effort that will bring them a step closer to using stem cells to cure debilitating diseases
SCIENTISTS here have uncovered 4,000 locations in the human genome where special proteins control the functions and activities of stem cells.
Doing so has helped them to understand what makes these cells tick, and brings them a step closer to using stem cells to cure a host of debilitating diseases.
Researchers the world over are working in this competitive field, but this is the first effort on such a large scale, said Dr Ng Huck Hui, who led a team of 23 scientists on the project.
Dr Ng is a group leader at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) and an assistant professor with the National University of Singapore's department of biological sciences.
The three-year effort called for special technology developed by the GIS, which made the large-scale mapping of the proteins possible and allowed the scientists to determine exactly where the on-off switches were among the strings of chemical letters that make up the genome - the genetic material of a particular organism.
This technique is a faster and more comprehensive way to read the functional bits of DNA, the part of the cell that carries genetic information.
The ground-breaking technology so impressed the United States National Institutes of Health that it awarded the GIS US$1 million (S$1.6 million) in funding in 2004.
Stem cells - the unprogrammed cells that can turn into various kinds of cells - are seen as the next frontier of medicine, offering hope in curing diseases ranging from cancer to Alzheimer's.
But despite research the world over, treatments are likely still years away.
A major stumbling block has been the inability so far to nudge the stem cells into producing precisely what an ailing body lacks - for example, healthy islet cells for diabetics.
Said Dr Ng: 'To do so, we first need to locate the genes and understand how they function. With this work, we are another step closer to developing treatments for patients.'
The team's work has been published in Nature Genetics this month. It is one of the world's top scientific journals, and a leader among the 120 or so journals dealing in genetics and heredity.
Commenting on the work, stem cell expert Ariff Bongso said it was an important effort, which would shed light on what keeps stem cells in their unspecialised state, and what causes them to transform.
'When it comes to stem cell genomics, it is research like this which is putting Singapore on the world map,' he said.
About 25 groups here are involved in stem cell research, a crucial niche in Singapore's efforts to build up the biomedical sector.
Professor Bongso and colleagues from the National University of Singapore recently published a related effort in the journal Stem Cells.
The group has uncovered hundreds of new genes active in human embryonic stem cells, part of a continuing effort to discover what such genes do, and in the long run direct them to transform into various cell and tissue types.
Touching on South Korea's recent stem cell scandal - which uncovered major scientific fraud on the part of top researcher Hwang Woo Suk - Prof Bongso added that it had in no way dampened research efforts here.
'A lot of work is still going on, because we're striving to find treatments for the sick.'
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