THE ESSENTIAL
- Stem cells are self-renewing, which means that the division of a stem cell gives rise to two daughter cells, identical to the parent cell.
- They can also enter into differentiation, that is to say initiate a differentiation program which will gradually transform the stem cell into another cell.
This is a very important advance in the field of gender medicine… Researchers from hadassah hospital, located in Jerusalem, Israel, successfully extracted both male and female stem cells from a single individual. Their work has been published in the journal Stem Cell Reports.
Male and female stem cells that come from the same individual
Scientists used cells from a man with Klinefelter syndrome, an abnormality in the number of sex chromosomes in which boys are born with at least two X chromosomes instead of just one, plus a Y chromosome (XXY), according to the MSD Manual. To extract the stem cells, the researchers did not use a new technique, but they are the first to have done so.
“The world of medical science today recognizes the great importance of the differences between women and men, explains Benjamin Reubinoff, lead author of this study, in a communiqué. The unique stem cell system [mâles et femelles avec le même code génétique] that we have developed will lead to new discoveries on gender differences, which may help to compare the efficacy and toxicity of drugs between men and women and thus develop more adapted medicine.”.
Stem cells could make treatment more gender-specific
Indeed, some diseases and health problems do not affect men and women in the same way. But scientists struggle to study sex, independent of other factors. Indeed, in classic studies involving humans or animals, sex cannot be an isolated factor. It is therefore difficult to see whether the reaction to a treatment, or the impact of a disease on a person comes from gender or other factors such as medical history, lifestyle, etc.
Having male and female stem cells with the same genetic code will therefore make it possible to test drugs with sex as the sole factor. Thus, by testing a drug or product on these stem cells, researchers will be able to see if gender has a real impact.
And the stake is important. Indeed, according to the authors, women, for example, have a greater risk of developing autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, while there is a higher mortality rate in men with Covid-19. In the long term, treatments by sex could therefore be developed thanks to this discovery.