Stem Cells From Fat Create Beating Heart Cells

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.

Rat hearted overlords?

Nah. We've already got those.

Re:Rat hearted overlords?

I ask that all rat lovers mod parent down for such an insult to rats everywhere.

Re:Rat hearted overlords?

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?

Re:Rat hearted overlords?

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.

Re:Rat hearted overlords?

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.

Re:Rat hearted overlords?

there are plenty of people out there who believe in the sanctity and purity of the human body. so they'd protest on those grounds.

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...

its only fair

my fat cells are killing my heart cells

might as well sacrifice a few of them to give back what they took

Re:its only fair

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"

Oh the irony...

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...

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 >: |

Re:Oh the irony...

And we shall harvest them, oh yes the time of the great fat farm is at hand.

Re:Oh the irony...

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.

Re:Oh the irony...

I'm not vegging out on the couch. I'm building up my stem-cell reserves.

Tuesday is my Fat-Heart group...

So the plan was to get the entire world to bulk up [physorg.com] and then sell their fat back to them as a means to save them...

the first rule of stem cell research is you don't talk about stem cell research.

Not realistic

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:

1. You have to isolate the stem cells from fat properly, which is not a simple task especially when you think about doing this en masse for many patients.
2. Then you have to transform the cells, which is costly and takes time and never works completely.
3. After you get the cells beating, they have to beat in rhythm with the electrical pulse from the heart.
4. Then you have to ensure that they stay that way and don't require any additional growth factors or other biomolecules to keep their differentiation.
5. You also need to anticipate possible immune responses, i.e. a host could reject its own cells.
6. Then you have to consider the cost of growing these cells ex vivo and you probably have to do this in advance, especially if you want to use autologous cells (the patient's own cells), since it will take a lot of time and patience to grow the cell number to something substantial that can be injected.

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.

reading sideway...

I did saw "stem cells extracted from human farts..." had to re-read it a second time wondering where the science could ever stop

Re:frosty piss

Pabst Brewing co., is that you?

Re:frosty piss

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.

Re:Better hope

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.

Re:Better hope

When "research" includes such things as "discovering that other nations exist," we are well and truly fucked.

Re:Better hope

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...

Re:Better hope

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.

Re:

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.

Re:The easy way

I'm not really offended, but it comes down for when life starts. Both Biblically and humanistically, I believe that we MUST value unborn life as a society, and not subject it to the whims of "the greater good," which rarely turns out as such. We consider human testing on anything other than volunteers as inhumane. If I consider the unborn as human, what other position am I supposed to take?

Re:i wish upon a day when

Just stop reading press releases and start reading books.
The reason you see these preliminary results everywhere is that there is a constant need of more good news to attract investors and sponsors.