Safe Stem Cells Produced From Adult Cells 207
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.
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:Hopefully (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: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.
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.
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.
Re:Hopefully (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hopefully (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" forever ago (don't worry, that's the only thing I actually appreciate about Bush). If we don't know whether or not a clump of cells is a life, we need to save those cells (except in the case of the health of the mother vs. health of clump of cells) until we know whether or not it is a human life or not. We need to play it safe if it might be a human life.
So, then it becomes a question of philosophy, what is a/the logical definition of life? This is, as you correctly identified, the crux of the matter. The problem is that a lot of conservatives like to define life as broadly as possible, so as somebody else stated, a vial of blood becomes a separate life. On the other hand, I've known a minority of liberals to define life as being severed from all other biological human interaction, which would make everything up to partial birth abortion perfectly acceptable.
My take, and as I stated before, I don't know for sure, is that life begins when it starts to incubate, which, imho, is when it implants into the wall of the uterus. This would make almost all contraceptives legal. I also think that the government doesn't need to dictate medical practices to a doctor, so the doctor will simply have to make the best decision he/she can at the time given the available information. Those decisions would be subject to a medical board if somebody second guesses the doctor, much like it is now.
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 inserted into eukaryotic chromosomes, making the changes more stable. But adenoviruses can be less harmful to the cells they infect, and can successfully infect more cells per treatment.
e.g. http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v18/n2/full/nbt0200_150.html [nature.com]
Re:Hopefully (Score:2, Informative)
without embryonic stem cells the process for making these induced pluripotency cells would never have been discovered.
The genes required for such reprogramming are intimately involved in the mechanisms that embryonic stem cells use to maintain their phenotype. Indeed without the extensive studies that have gone on in both human and mouse ES cells we would be completely ignorant about the roles of these genes.
A little research will make you sound a whole less ignorant.
Re:already done by the University of Wisconsin (Score:1, Informative)
You are misinformed.
First, the novelty of the current paper lies in using adenoviral vectors that do not integrate into the genome. Thomson used lentiviral vectors to deliver his transgenes.... a technique that will never generate cells with clinical utility.
Second, this general reprogramming approach was first accomplished by Yamanaka in Japan. Thomson is a hack who's trying to get credit and patents for ideas based on someone else's prior art.
Re:Stem cells in teeth (Score:2, Informative)
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.
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?
Re:Hopefully (Score:3, Informative)
An earlier study did in fact take human fibroblasts and showed they could be reverted back to the deprogrammed state. In mice without immune systems, they behaved as human embryonic stem cells do. But you're right, we can't shut the door on HeS cells yet, it is too premature, we might find problems with IPS cells that aren't the case with HeS cells.
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.
Yes it does... (Score:3, Informative)
As the adult stem cells are more stable and less prone to grow tumors. It's like putting a 16 yr old first time driver (the researchers) in a Chevy or a NASCAR. And seeing which one they have more success driving around town.
History lesson... (Score:3, Informative)
"You same types were the ones saying there was no way the earth is round or revolved around the sun."
They weren't telling Columbus the world was round. But that it was 2x-3x bigger than he thought and that he'd never make it.
Oh...guess what...they were right. And if there hadn't happened to be another continent smack in the middle of the ocean. Columbus would have died and not even been remembered.