Hello, it s Norman Swan here with The Health Report. Exporting Australian plastic surgeons to our region with enormous impact on communities there, and no, they re not doing breast jobs or face lifts. And, the possibility that one day a liver transplant may be done with an injection which has little risk of an immune reaction. The work that may lead to this advance is being done at the University of North Carolina by Professor Lola Reid and her colleagues. It involves stem cells, embryonic cells discovered and grown only a couple of years ago, and they re turning out to have great potential.
Stem cells are immature cells capable of maturing into many different fates.
They can produce tissues of different types. The most primitive stem cells are called toti potent , meaning that they can form an entire being, an entire organism. So the early embryo is in fact a toti potent stem cell. The toti potent stem cell gives rise to daughter cells that gradually restrict their genetic potential to that for a limited number of fates, so the toti potent stem cell gives rise to what are called determined stem cells that have a more restricted potential. So there are determined stem cells that can form brain tissue, there are determined stem cells that can form the blood, there are determined stem cells that can form liver, but they no longer have the capacity to form other types of tissues other than that for which they are destined.