WASHINGTON: A Minnesota researcher says she has found a previously unknown class of cells in the adult body that act much like the highly versatile stem cells from human embryos, that have caused a political furore for more than a year.

Like embryonic stem cells, the cells recently discovered in adult bone marrow seem capable of turning into various tissues of the body, raising hopes that they can be fashioned into transplantable material for patients whose own cells and tissues have become faulty. The cells were discovered by University of Minnesota researcher Dr Catherine Verfaillie and colleagues.

Anti-abortion groups said the discovery shows that scientists can use adult cells to cure disease rather than embryonic cells, which cannot be obtained without destroying human embryos.

“With adult cells, we may be able to do everything that embryonic stem cells have been proposed for, and without the ethical problems,” said Richard Doerflinger, a spokesman for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which believes embryo destruction is tantamount to murder.

Verfaillie and an array of other scientists said adult and embryonic stem cells both show promise and should be vigorously investigated.

As evidence, she and others cited a second paper in which scientists used embryonic stem cells to ease the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in rats.

These scientists, led by Ron McKay of the National Institutes of Health, turned embryonic stem cells from mice into a specific type of brain cell before transplanting them into the rats.

Transforming stem cells in this way has been largely a hit-and-miss process. But the team said it had developed a method to transform the cells reliably and in high numbers, suggesting that it could one day be industrialized to serve a large number of patients.

“We can really deliver the right cell that we need by starting with an embryonic stem cell,” McKay said.

Once an arcane debate, the relative promise of adult and embryonic stem cells has become politically charged in recent years. The goal is to turn these cells into new heart cells for cardiac patients, brain cells for Alzheimer’s patients, insulin-producing cells for diabetics, and the like.—Dawn/The LAT/WP News Service.