Medical Devices & Surgical Technology Week

Monoclonal side population progenitors have been isolated from the fetal pancreas.

"The side population (SP) phenotype might represent a common molecular feature for a wide variety of stem cells. The aim of this study was to investigate whether monoclonal SP progenitor cells were established from human fetal pancreas," scientists in China report.

"Islet-like cell clusters (ICCs) were isolated from human fetal pancreas. Monolayer epithelium-like cells were obtained from the ICCs and passaged thereafter. Single SP or non-SP cells were sorted from these cells at the sixth passage," wrote L. Zhang and colleagues at Peking University in Beijing.

"The rate of clone formation was about 2.7% for the SP cells, whereas there was no clone formation for the non-SP cells. The SP cell clones were further expanded for more than 15 passages and induced for differentiation into cells with characteristics of pancreatic beta-cells," investigators said.

"We show for the first time that the monoclonal SP progenitors are established from human fetal pancreas. Therefore, this study may offer a novel method to purify pancreatic progenitor cells from human tissues," suggested the authors.

Zhang and colleagues published their study in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications (Monoclonal side population progenitors isolated from human fetal pancreas. Biochem Biophys Res Commun, 2005;333(2):603-8).