Swiss scientists have found that prolonged inflammation can cause regenerating stem cells to grow into new, aberrant types of cell. In their study, they showed in mouse model such chronic inflammation can signal corneal stem cell to differentiate into skin cell leading to blindness. Stem cells are undifferentiated cells of a multicellular organism which is capable of giving rise to indefinitely more cells of the same type, and from which certain other kinds of cell arise by differentiation.
When a stem cell divides, each new cell has the potential either to remain a stem cell or become another type of cell with a more specialized function. Many tissues contain a reserve of stem cells that help them heal and self-renew after injury or inflammation. In an effort to understand what happens under chronic inflammation conditions, a team of Swiss researchers from Institute for Experimental…
