Stem Cells From Fat Create Beating Heart Cells 198
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.
Does McDonalds have a stake in this? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why am I having visions of average Joes being fatted up for their stem cells... wait, but... those darn fast food companies may be on to something!
(captcha: exporter ["We will be exporting fat stem cells from obese Americans!"])
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
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.
The easy way (Score:1, Insightful)
Why can't we just use the stem cells from fetuses, drop the friggin "soul"-discussion now, ok? Stem cells are probably the most promising research field in biology today, can't we just drop the fundamentalist christians from the whole thing? In the name of humanity? Please?
Re:The easy way (Score:3, Insightful)
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: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.
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?
Re:The easy way (Score:3, Insightful)
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 higher education and the modern collegiate system took shape within the catholic monasteries of the middle ages among the scribes whose efforts in propagating language and culture proved vital to later civil/social developments of the western world. And centuries before the crazy nut jobs took over Islam, it was Islamic scholars who preserved much of the writings of Plato, Aristotle and other treasures of Greek antiquity.
We play politics with this sort of thing a lot these days. But the actual stories behind the talking points are many shades of gray.
Nobel Prize material (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does McDonalds have a stake in this? (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.
Re:Rat hearted overlords? (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:The easy way (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Oh the irony... (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Re:Better hope (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:Better hope (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.