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Safe Stem Cells Produced From Adult Cells
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun Sep 28, 2008 11:51 AM
from the spare-parts dept.
from the spare-parts dept.
hackingbear writes "Wired, citing a paper published in Science magazine, reports that Harvard scientists may have found a safer way of giving a flake of skin the biologically alchemical powers of embryonic stem cells by turning adult cells into versatile, embryonic-like cells without causing permanent damage. The technique involves 'adding cell-reprogramming genes to adenoviruses, a type of virus that infects cells without affecting their DNA.' Four-month trials on mice demonstrated that the resulting stem cells are free from unpredictable cancer-inducing mutations. This is definitely a breakthrough in stem cell research."
Additional coverage is available at Yahoo, and Science hosts the research paper, although you'll need a subscription to see more than the abstract.
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Advance In Making Stem Cells From Skin 139 comments
KillerBob writes with an advance on the news from a year back that stem cells can be produced from human skin — discussed here. Now Canadian researchers have found a safe way to generate stem cells without using viruses to modify the genome, a process that can have its own dangers. "The ethical debate over embryonic stem cell use may soon be moot, thanks to a Canadian team of researchers who, together with a team out of Scotland, has found a safe way to grow stem cells from a patient's own skin. The revolutionary finding, described in a paper published yesterday by the international science journal Nature, means doctors may be one step closer to treating a multitude of diseases, including Alzheimer's, diabetes and Parkinson's."
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already done by the University of Wisconsin (Score:5, Informative)
Wisconsin has and licenses most of the original embryonic stem cell lines that are approved for federal funding. Of course the popular press will cling to anything done by "Harvard".
Re: you wish. (Score:3, Informative)
Your title is wrong. This was NOT already done by the UW.
Also, your content is wrong. Thomson did NOT use adult stem cells -- his lab reprogrammed adult *skin* cells.
(That fact is even in the title of your linked story!)
Thomson used retroviral infection, as did the Yamanaka lab in Japan that did similar experiments around the same time. The Harvard lab used adenoviruses, a different vector with different outcomes.
The a major difference between retrovirus and adenovirus? Retroviruses can get the target genes
Re:Further Research (Score:4, Funny)
...missing an arm and leg.
Did he need to pay for gas?
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Re:Further Research (Score:5, Funny)
"We need to find a short blond kid missing an arm and leg."
Or make one.
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Re:Further Research (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Hopefully (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nobody is aborting foetuses simply to get stem cells. They're taking cells from foetuses who are *already* aborted and whose usefulness is otherwise to merely be thrown in the trash.
Your 'main question' is a complete strawman - we don't even harvest organs from executed prisoners even though that would save a lot of lives, because that question was asked and answered year ago.
Re:Hopefully (Score:4, Informative)
Nobody is aborting foetuses simply to get stem cells. They're taking cells from foetuses who are *already* aborted and whose usefulness is otherwise to merely be thrown in the trash.
Your 'main question' is a complete strawman - we don't even harvest organs from executed prisoners even though that would save a lot of lives, because that question was asked and answered year ago.
Uh, no. They are taking embryo's from fertility clinics, not abortiong clinics. You see, when a couple goes to a fertility clinic, the clinic will fertilize multiple eggs. This is because it is so expensive, may as well do several per shot. When the couple conceives, divorces or whatever, the remaining embryos are discarded. These are the embryos that are donated for science research.
The problem some have this is that the fertilized eggs are put in a culture and manipulated to divide, thus becoming an embryo and no longer a "zygote". Stem cells are extracted from this embryo, killing it in the process.
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Re:Hopefully (Score:5, Insightful)
>...With this new breakthrough, it could be possible to save many lives without killing a potential human life.
Yep, all those unneeded fertilized embryos now go straight to the incinerator, no stop for any life-saving harvesting in between.
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Re:Hopefully (Score:5, Informative)
many people believe "Human Life" doesn't begin until after the state that embryo's are harvested.
yes, but this new discovery neatly side- steps that problem.
and for those above who say that McCain will find some way to construe it as unethical, the pope has said that adult stem cell research is fine. Pope endorses adult stem-cell research (catholicnews.com) [catholicnews.com] If the pope is good with it, i don't see any elected official having a problem with it.
"The possibilities opened up by this new chapter in research are in themselves fascinating" because adult stem-cell studies have pointed to actual and potential cures of degenerative diseases that would otherwise lead to disabilities or death, the pope said at an audience for participants attending a Vatican-sponsored congress on stem-cell therapy.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Joe Biden (candidate for the Office of the Vice President of the United States, and a Catholic, even) disagrees.
Abortion being wrong, abortion being a necessary evil to prevent more deaths, and the united states government having a right to dictate to women what they can and can't do to their own bodies are three totally separate issues. Most everyone feels that abortion is a bad thing, but anyone rational sees that there are more issues than than that which aren't so simple of "is it wrong."
Drinking yourself into oblivion every night is bad, but prohibition didn't work and was a stupid move to begin with because th
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In my humble opinion, I don't know whether or not a small clump of cells should be considered human life (has to be a "small" clump of cells because humans are just a big clump of walking, talking cells in the first place).
I become concerned when people say that if we don't know if its a life or not, then we should treat it as dead to help the unambiguously alive. I would disagree with that, and I think that's what Bush meant when he said America should be a "culture of life" not a "culture of death" forev
Re:Only on mice, for now (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead we're faced with the new controversy that every skin cell you shed can be considered an embryo that, with the correct application of medical science, can now become a child.
Scratching yourself will now mean you're killing babies!
Or, perhaps you're trying to create an evil clone army with all those cells?
There's plenty of material and interpretations for anyone who wants to find controversy.
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Re:Only on mice, for now (Score:5, Funny)
Exfoliation is MURDER!!!
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
It's okay - you're worth it
Only for contrarians. (Score:4, Insightful)
There's plenty of material and interpretations for anyone who wants to find controversy.
Only if you're being a sophist. The people who are upset at fetal stem cell research aren't just making up clever arguments to dump all over people's hard work and potential medical salvation -- they genuinely believe in the whole "life starts at conception" argument.
You may not agree with pro-lifers, but you're not going to convince them to change their minds or find middle ground with the ones that are on the fence about fetal stem cells with ridiculous straw man arguments. And you're never going to make a difference if you have nothing but contempt for the other side's beliefs and the honesty with which they hold them.
Really, that applies to all of politics, faith, taste, and any other subject with an emotional element that can't be reduced to a simple proof of facts.
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Re:Doesn't matter (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who considers "humane killing" an oxymoron of the first degree, I'm fine with the idea. The person being killed probably doesn't care much whether he's injected with a lethal poison or shot in the head. The person needing a transplant, on the other hand, cares very much about living a normal life.
Similarly, the embryos are already being created and destroyed en masse by fertility clinics. (And yet, for some reason, pro-lifers never complain about that.) Does the embryo care whether it's grown into organ tissue or thrown in the trash? Does a person suffering from a degenerative disease care about a cure?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't you see how this practice encourages the killing to be done in the first place?
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not too far unlike the the reason why labor laws generally do not allow you to opt-out (minimum wage, lunch, etc). While it is understandable that workers may want to on their own accord, it becomes extremely difficult to prove that they weren't encouraged to by their employer.
Similarly, if we're allowed to harvest organ from people we killed on purpose, how can we be sure that the person was killed for legitimate reasons? So we look to legislation to minimize any positive side effects to a person's death.
And likewise, while embryos might not count as human life, they are human. By allowing people to harvest stem cells from them, you are putting utility in destroying human could-be-life. The end result is not awfully far from _farming_ human could-be-life since, as above, proving things like 'abandoned' is difficult. This doesn't sit well with a lot of people, and especially so with those that view embryos are full fledged human life.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> What do you think of the Chinese practice of executing prisoners with a bullet to the head, so that no vital organs are damaged, allowing them to be transplanted to faithful Party hacks, or people willing to pony up the money for them? Would you be cool with the US government doing the same thing? After all, the guy's going to be killed anyway; It's RECYCLING!!!111eleventy
I don't live in the US so I really don't care either way, but if a criminal who has been sentenced to death is willing to donate his
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:4, Informative)
try not to be too scared every time the word virus is mentioned. Viruses help as well as harm. There is very good evidence that viruses (and viral originated elements retained in these hosts) have shaped the structure and content of the genomes of many creatures (humans included) in positive ways: http://genome.cshlp.org/cgi/content/full/15/8/1073 [cshlp.org]
Adenovirus are in some way more benign given the lack direct integration into the host genome.
the released paper by Konrad's group is pretty interesting, albeit more of a technical accomplishment than a new paradigm shift.
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Re:Hmmmm (Score:4, Informative)
try not to be too scared every time the word virus is mentioned.
Very true, and I'd add to that many vaccines are actually live viruses. You survived those just fine.
The important difference here is that they are safer because they don't mess up your code. The viruses which integrate their genes into your genes dump it wherever, potentially in the promoter region of a cancer-supressing gene. When the virus does that, the DNA will be maintained whenever that cell reproduces.
If the virus, like the one used here, doesn't put the DNA into the genome, it can still work for a limited time, apperantly long enough to get the job done. It won't be putting it into any genes you need to prevent cancer. And after a few divisions, the cell will lose the artificial DNA. In other words, it will be as it was before.
The mechanisms the other types of viruses would cause you cancer aren't true with this type.
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Re:Hmmmm (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, it's an unpredictable cancer-inducing mutation of the original variation of "safe".
Not familiar with adenoviruses, are you? Didn't RTFA, did you? Still don't see what you did wrong, do you?
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Re:As someone with a spinal injury..... (Score:4, Informative)
My main question is when the hell is this actually going to help someone?
Well, if we had something that works, we'd be selling it. Many treatments that seem really promising in early stages, when it's just yeast, rats, or pigs, seem very effective, but then make the jump to humans and it suddenly doesn't work. The other common occourance is that something works great in mice, but a little too great.
In the case of mice trials of IPS cells, the injected cells did indeed make many types of cells including neurons. Of course, it was completely random and produced awful tumors which would be resistant to cancer treatments. When injected in the abdomen for instance, many mice developed large bony tumors which eventually would have killed them.
IPS cell treatment could maybe do some help but would go way overboard. Neurons wouldn't just grow in your spinal cord, there would also probably be bone cells, fat cells, skin cells, and a lot of not completely mature cells which would crawl all throughout your central nervous system before turning into whatever they felt like. Some cells may turn into neurons at the right places and make the right connections, but most would not, and there's no way yet to screen out those others.
I believe the chinese have injected human embryonic stem cells, functionally the same thing as the stem cells discussed here, into humans. The results were not pretty, the victims died within months of teratomas.
As far as the rate, it is painfully slow for an individual watching the process. This is true for all levels of research though, it's never fast enough for the researchers (and it's frustrating for us, believe me) and it's not fast enough for patients. Not the answer that you're hoping for, but we are trying our very best. To be honest, the field is progressing extremely rapidly compared to other fields of biomedical results. Everyone involved knows the huge benefits this research would gain, and there's a ton of funding compared to other areas. It's been about a year since the original breakthrough, in that time they've apperantly managed to overcome one obstacle to treatment, a feat which would take much longer normally. The researchers in labs working about this probably average at least 60 hours a week working on it, one of the lead investigators took a yearlong sabattical from teaching entirely to work on this, and I've heard several researchers, having published the papers last year have said they're going to get out of this research or research entirely, they're too burned out.
We also aren't letting the talking heads get in our way. The current induced pluripotent stem cell field came out of human embryonic stem cell research. While the moral nannies were saying it was an outrage, those scientists came up with this.
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