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Stem Cells From Fat Create Beating Heart Cells
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Oct 22, 2008 12:05 AM
from the for-the-love-of-god-montressor dept.
from the for-the-love-of-god-montressor dept.
Amenacier writes "Melbourne scientists recently discovered that stem cells isolated from human fat could be made to turn into beating heart muscle cells when cultured with rat heart cells. This discovery may lead to the use of fat stem cells in repairing cardiac damage, or fixing such cardiac problems as holes in the heart. It is proposed that culturing the stem cells with rat heart cells allows them to differentiate into heart muscle through signals from the rat cells. In the future it may be possible to inject/transplant the stem cells into the damaged area and have them naturally differentiate into the type of cell required, with only the natural stimuli provided by surrounding cells, without any danger of rejection by the body. Quoting: 'The next step is to implant the human heart cells onto the damaged heart of a laboratory rat to see whether they repair the heart. Then they would be trialled in higher species such as sheep and pigs before human applications could be considered. Clinical application could be five years away ...'" The Age has a multimedia treatment (Flash) of the discovery.
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Rat hearted overlords? (Score:5, Funny)
Nah. We've already got those.
Re:Rat hearted overlords? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Rat hearted overlords? (Score:5, Interesting)
I ask that all rat lovers mod parent down for such an insult to rats everywhere.
Pretty much off-topic, so I've foregone my karmic bonus. Mods, please be gentle.
Rats rock. Best pets I've had. They're clean, loyal, friendly, and low upkeep. Terrific. They've even potty-trainable with less that 1-month of effort - I used to let mine run loose and kept ramps up so that they could return to their cages to crap.
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On-topic... If we can generate stem-cells applicable to human research trans-specially, who other than PETA would continue to object?
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
On-topic... If we can generate stem-cells applicable to human research trans-specially, who other than PETA would continue to object?
People afraid of cloning
Re:Rat hearted overlords? (Score:5, Insightful)
On-topic... If we can generate stem-cells applicable to human research trans-specially, who other than PETA would continue to object?
The goal of the field is to use stem cells derived from the person being treated. The idea is it would run something like this: take a few vials of blood or a bit of adipose tissue (subcutaneous fat), send them to the lab to be turned into stem cells or precursor heart / kidney / pancreas / brain cells, inject into or near the appropriate tissue (maybe just give as a transfusion), and things will Just Work.
The only -- ONLY -- reason people are in an uproar about this sort of work is because fetal stem cells are being used by many researchers in the field, and obtaining fetal tissue is politically charged. (There's good scientific reasons to use fetal stem cells that have to do with host rejection.) Once we can take adult cells and turn them back into pluripotent stem cells (fixing the telomeres along the way, even), or barring that can get the equivalent naive stem cells from placenta or umbilical cord tissue, we won't require fetal tissue any more and the whole issue will fade quietly as it should.
Unfortunately, I'm on vacation, so don't have my references handy, but there are lots and lots and lots of people working on creating stem cells from adults, and there has been remarkable progress.
So, this is a long-winded way of saying that I doubt anyone in research team from the article is considering the application for their work to be to use xenograft stem cells (from a different species), but to instead use human fat cells to create new heart tissue.
Parent
Re:Rat hearted overlords? (Score:4, Interesting)
There are a bit over 70 treatments using adult or cord blood stem cells (list here [stemcellresearch.org]) with embryonic cells being used in zero treatments. The plasticity of embryonic stem cells is a disadvantage it seems due to the tendency towards tumor formation.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I would be a terrible scientist if I didn't preface this with the disclamer: I could be wrong in every word, current theories may be wrong and I could also not be current. Having said that...
The evidence suggests that adult stem cells are not pluripotent and are fate restricted. An adult stem cell population that could give rise to any cell type would be a big liability to the organism, as that would be a population of cells much closer to producing tumors than a fate-restricted stem cell.
It is unlikely t
Re:Rat hearted overlords? (Score:5, Insightful)
So those people will eventually die off because they're unwilling to receive the help they'll need, while those of us that would be happy to use a lab-grown replacement heart/kidney/left-leg with no possible chance of tissue rejection would continue the human race...
Sounds like a win-win to me...
Parent
its only fair (Score:5, Insightful)
my fat cells are killing my heart cells
might as well sacrifice a few of them to give back what they took
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Maybe the problem is most of those stem cells are being convinced to change to fat cells instead of heart cells
Seriously though, are fat and heart cells from the same "germ layer"? I'm too lazy to look it up.
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I don't.
Especially since:
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/wire/sns-ap-skull-stem-cells,0,5876836.story [newsday.com]
While the above is not proof and more anecdotal (but I'm sure everyone was happy that the skull finally healed for whatever reason), it is also claimed to have worked with rats before:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4873 [newscientist.com]
And also they've been coaxed into smooth muscle:
http://www.physorg.com/news72983041.html [physorg.com]
So, just another step, not a leap. Useful step no doubt :).
I think there are plenty of p
Re:its only fair (Score:4, Interesting)
Soon there will be mobile liposuction centers every few blocks.
"Donate your fat, save lives!"
Not to mention "Drink beer, so you have fat to donate"
Parent
Oh the irony... (Score:5, Funny)
That from the fat of the overweight American comes the cure for heart disease brought on by his poor diet!
With two thirds of Americans overweight, this is promising news.
Re:Oh the irony... (Score:4, Funny)
That from the fat of the overweight American comes the cure for heart disease brought on by his poor diet!
With two thirds of Americans overweight, this is promising news.
for THEM..
what about thin people like me.. they'll live forever now and have more fat daughters >: |
Parent
Re:Oh the irony... (Score:5, Funny)
And we shall harvest them, oh yes the time of the great fat farm is at hand.
Parent
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Re:Oh the irony... (Score:5, Funny)
Meh.
I want my stem cells the right way, derived from the tortured souls of aborted cherubic foetuses. Enough to fill the dancefloor atop the head of a pin.
The immortality of one can not be achieved but by the suffering of many.
This is just dishonest.
Parent
Re:Oh the irony... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not vegging out on the couch. I'm building up my stem-cell reserves.
Parent
Tuesday is my Fat-Heart group... (Score:5, Funny)
the first rule of stem cell research is you don't talk about stem cell research.
Adult stem cells vs. foetal stem cells (Score:2, Informative)
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Not realistic (Score:4, Informative)
There's a lot of questions that have to be answered here - it's not as simple as they say it is. Adipose-derived stem cells are definitely nothing new - adult stem cells are widely studied and commonly used in bioengineering labs. The problem is that translating this into a clinically useful tool is far from reality, and there are a lot of fundamental issues that have to be resolved before something useful can be made:
In Australia things might happen faster, but for the US, getting this particular system running is full of regulatory issues and problems that aren't going to be easily addressed - 5 years is frankly impossible. I'd say 10 years, and that's AFTER they get all of the animal studies up and running. Ah, and it will cost tens of millions of dollars, if not hundreds of millions.
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Department (Score:2, Insightful)
Eh? Was there a beating heart in The Cask of Amontillado? Maybe "the beating of his hideous heart" from The Tell-Tale Heart would have been more appropriate?
OMG: Someone's been watching.. (Score:3, Informative)
Nobel Prize material (Score:3, Insightful)
reading sideway... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:frosty piss (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:frosty piss (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, I tried Pabst Blue Ribbon for the first time the other day, and it wasn't too bad. Everybody always talking about how bad it is, but they should just give it a try.
Beer, and this includes your favorite beer, is something you grow to like. In reality beer is nasty shit and we all know it. We just learn to tolerate a certain flavor, and we like to stick to what we learned to tolerate. Many may deny it, but in reality all we really want is the alcohol, or one to have the taste to remind us of the alcohol.
Yep, I just said that a beer didn't taste bad, and then went on to say that all beer tastes bad.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yep, I just said that a beer didn't taste bad, and then went on to say that all beer tastes bad.
Ah. I guess that means you're drunk :-P
Re:Better hope (Score:5, Informative)
That McCain/Palin don't get elected if you want this kind of research to continue.
no matter who gets elected in the USA, future research won't be effected by this. Unless said president decides to attack Australia. Please do more research next time before making off-hand comments about politics.
Parent
Re:Better hope (Score:5, Funny)
When "research" includes such things as "discovering that other nations exist," we are well and truly fucked.
Parent
Re:Better hope (Score:5, Informative)
Even more so, since this is not embryonic stem-cell research (to which McCain, Palin, and many other Christians object), but rather adult stem-cell research (to which only Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists object, as far as I know).
Personally, I have yet to read of truly successful research with embryonic stem cells (because they are generally rejected by the recipient), whereas many large advances have been made with adult stem cells (since the donor and the recipient are the same person, rejection is eliminated) -- for men at least, pluripotent cells have been found in the testicles, so that any type of cell could be produced without having to use embryonic stem cells. I also recently saw a report about a person with congenital heart disease who was apparently cured by an injection of his own bone-marrow stem cells.
So I suppose my question would be why the intellectual elites want to spend their research monies on embryonic stem-cell research that is more expensive, less successful, and morally questionable to a large sector of society, rather than on research in areas where successes keep coming, the cells are available without moral complications, and the costs are in general lower. A cynical person might think that it's all about getting drug patents and getting money out of the consumers and padding their own checkbooks...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Even Jehovah's Witnesses don't have an objection to banking and reusing their own personal blood. A lot of people are trying to make religious objections larger than they actually are in an effort to make religious people seem foolish or weird. Don't get taken in.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So I suppose my question would be why the intellectual elites want to spend their research monies on embryonic stem-cell research that is more expensive, less successful, and morally questionable to a large sector of society, rather than on research in areas where successes keep coming, the cells are available without moral complications, and the costs are in general lower.
Well, human embryonic stem (HES) cells have already proven invaluable in research. Notably it was by studying them that we found out how to make induced pluripotent stem cells (IPS), basically how to make any cell into personalized embryonic stem cells without the embryo or the tissue rejection. That's not something you can say about adult stem cells: they won't ever be able to make new spinal cord cells. IPS cells can, and if we hadn't been researching HES cells, we never would have figured out how to m
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
Conservatives oppose embryonic stem cell research, not adult stem cell research.
Re:Better hope (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I wouldn't know what Christians are saying. As far as I can tell, they're not saying anything about adult stem cells. They were opposed to embryonic stem cells because of how they were harvested, and it wasn't just Christians who were opposed.
By the way, mocking Christianity on Slashdot for easy upmods is too easy.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actual christians (instead of the caricatures and straw men you see on slashdot and elsewhere) are rather happy about adult stem cell therapies and wholeheartedly support them.
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Melbourne scientists recently discovered that stem cells isolated from human fat could be made to turn into beating heart muscle cells when cultured with rat heart cells
Making the joke "hung like a mouse" a little more true to life.
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What do you mean? Step back as the opposite of step up to the plate?
here is a partial list of when they (have) work(ed) against progress
Christianity vs. Galileo & Copernicus
Fa Lung Gong vs. every frigging thing that is normal
Christian Science vs. modern medicine
Scientology vs. psychology
Islam (the fundamentalist variety) vs. gender equality and global harmony
But to be fair, religion *has* also stepped up to the plate on a few occasions. It is important to keep in mind that the concept of hi
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The religious problem of Galileo was that he was saying that the Church must change the way it taught Scripture so that it conformed to heliocentrism. The Church, reasonably in my view, said that Galileo had to either say it was a theory, prove it was a fact, or shut his pie hole. Within a few short years, Galileo's works were in free circulation in Catholic Christendom using the formulation that heliocentrism was a theory. The last actual scientific objection to heliocentrism was laid to rest in the mid 18
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One big advantage of using fat (or other adult) stem cells over fetal cells is that the cells could be harvested from the target patient, thus avoiding tissue rejection problems.
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Re:The easy way (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:i wish upon a day when (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason you see these preliminary results everywhere is that there is a constant need of more good news to attract investors and sponsors.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep. We Americans have been looking for a new invention to sell the world. Well, it's fat. We have the biggest supply of fat of any country. Start-up the liposuction machines, and start exporting those fat-to-heart organ replacements.