1 COMMENT

Naushad Moti     - 13 hours ago
After going through this paper, the more I read reviews from experts in the field, the more I am inclined towards the non-existence or I would rather say, potential effects of STAP stem cells on Homo sapiens. First, the paper (and review by Dr Knoepfler) suggests that stress do create a microenvironment for the cells of dedifferentiate and mimic somewhere between PSCs and ESCs. I would agree with Dr Knoepfler, that now a range of paper would get published suggesting other stress-related stem cell production. I feel, this might be a useful area of research in cancer biology as previously, it has been identified that stress (for e.g., hypoxia) do have a role to play in the production of Cancer Stem Cells (CSCs) in many human cancers. The cells, under stress, do produce acid and therefore, this study further enlighten the fact that the production of acid by certain cells render them to dedifferentiate and work as CSCs. This could also be a valuable study to prove the controversial existence of CSCs and might be a very good avenue to artificially make them and study their biology. Summarising, i think it could be a valuable asset in CSC biology rather than normal stem cell biology.Thank you