Research Issue - Harvard School of Dental Medicine

harvarddentalbulletinWinter 2010–11Volume 70Number 3Research FocusMaking Stem Cells from Mature CellsGroundbreaking research by HSDM’s Bjorn Olsen andDamian Medici may revolutionize personalized medicine.As debilitating as disease can be, it can sometimes act as ateacher. HSDM researchers Bjorn R. Olsen and Damian Medici,PhD ’08, have found that by mimicking a rare genetic disorderin a dish, they can rewind the internal clock of a mature cell anddrive it back into an adult stem-cell stage. This new “stem cell”can then branch out into a variety of differentiated cell types,both in culture and in animal models.“This certainly has implications for personalized medicine, especiallyin the area of tissue engineering,” says Olsen, HSDM’s deanfor research and professor of developmental biology and Herseyprofessor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School (HMS). Theresearch, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health,appeared online in Nature Medicine in November 2010.Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), which affects fewerthan 1,000 people worldwide, is a genetic disease in which acuteinflammation causes soft tissue to morph into cartilage andbone. Over the course of a few decades, FOP patients graduallybecome thoroughly ossified, as though parts of their body haveturned to stone. There is no cure or treatment.Through this research, Medici, an HSDM Dean’s Scholar andinstructor in medicine at HMS, found that, unlike normal skeletaltissue, the pathological cartilage and bone cells from FOPpatients contained biomarkers specific for endothelial cellsthat line the interior of blood vessels. This discovery led him toquestion whether the cartilage and bone growing in soft tissuesof FOP patients had an endothelial origin.8