Stem Cell Transplant in Rat Brains

twivel writes "According to this article, scientists have transplanted stem cells into the brain of stroke-damaged rats. These stem cells grew and formed connections with neighboring cells. In 7 days, cells began to differentiate into basic, yet immature types of cells that form the fundamental structure of the brain. Pretty cool, though I wonder where they find their 'stroke-stricken' rats at." Unfortunately for the rats, the strokes are probably induced.

Re:Tantamount to genocide

[Flabdabb Hubbard]

Point is, most of the animal testing that goes on is not medical it is cosmetic e.g. shampoo, lipstick etc. I have nothing against genuine research, and I can conceive that it may on rare occasions be morally acceptable to experiment on animals, but on this scale, it just seems wrong.

Re:ethical dilemma

[DrgnDancer]

PThat seems to be what theses scientists are proposing. They mention harvesting the cells from the adults that are sick, and also mention bone marrow stem cells.

ethical dilemma

[caite]

This will end up being a huge ethical dilemma. The article says that they use embryonic cortical cells (from the brain area)... wanna bet that the embryonic rat doesn't develop much after that?

So medical professionals are going to have to choose between the lives of older people and the lives of potential human babies.

The humor in this is going to be the justification for abortions. "Grandma needed stem cells to fix her brain, so we had to do it!" I foresee religious groups out protesting against this procedure. And I'd love to see the doctors who had to choose whether the pope should get the treatment.

Re:ethical dilemma

[Christopher Thomas]

So medical professionals are going to have to choose between the lives of older people and the lives of potential human babies.

If I understand correctly, stem cells are immortal (able to divide indefinitely). This means you'd need one sample for all future needs. I'm sure there's enough honestly-obtainable tissue for that.

Of course, all of this will be academic for another decade or so until research translates into practice.

Another promising avenue of exploration is transforming one form of stem cell into another. This would let us use a patient's own bone marrow stem cells to regenerate any kind of tissue (with the added bonus of not requiring immunosuppressant drugs forever after to prevent rejection). However, while research is promising, this will stay in the lab for quite a while.

Re:ethical dilemma

[puck01]

If I understand correctly, stem cells are immortal (able to divide indefinitely). This means you'd need one sample for all future needs. I'm sure there's enough honestly-obtainable tissue for that.

From my experience, stem cells are not in reality immortal. Theroetically, perhaps, yes. In reality, no. For instance, everytime a stem cell divides there is a very small chance of an error in reproduction of the DNA molucules (ie. mutations). After a number of generations, as you might imagine, they will be no good. Also, undifferented cells (ie. stem cells) don't like to stay undifferentiated from what I understand. A friend of mine works at a lab at Washington University, and it is common for a batch of their stem cells to spontaeously convert to a specifc tissue. One time they arrived at the lab after a long weekend to find a rythmically contracting culture of cells....the stem cells spontaneously differentiated to cardiac muscle cells! I suppose with time we might get better at preserving the stem cells, but cells will never (I usually hate to use the word never, but I think it applies here) be able to make exact copies of themselves everytime.

More Immoral than a Russ Myers picture? Naw.

[Kibo]

Some stuff I read mentioned that embryotic stem cells would divide many times, but stem cells culled from other areas were less cooprative. This Scientific American article [sciam.com] seems to bear out yer hypothesis though. This article [sciam.com] mentions embryotic stem cells dividing for more than 250 generations, and mentions so medical research.

But back to the immorality part. What I think the first poster was getting at is that this promising research might be stymied by certain political concerns. These concerns would protest the research based on the fact that the knowledge that lives might eventually be saved, may lower the emiotional costs of choosing abortion. This of course is true; stem cell research does have right wing opponants (at least in the US). I pretty much think their premis is a load of bunk (there's a word ya don't see now days). I would imagine that someone looking into abortion would have a lot of bigger fish to fry than, "Maybe some day my babies stem cells will grow up to cure cancer." Further more, I would respectfully submit that anyone that is having that kind of internal monologue is just trying to rationalize the choice they want to make for other more selfish (and practical) reasons. But it's never a choice I'll face, and for that I'm thankful.

Re:ethical dilemma

[jdfly]

Actually, the use of embryonic cortical cells as source tissue is a temporary thing...

Other groups are starting to isolate neural stem cells from adult tissue, which in itself isn't a huge step forward (this translates to grinding up cadaver brains), but still other groups are perfecting methods to isolate totipotent stem cells (i.e. they can become any cell type, including neurons) from bone marrow; extracting bone marrow is easy (and trivial to someone facing Parkinson's or Alzheimer's.

Don't worry, if this procedure actually works in people (no guarantees), it won't be at the cost of unborn Christian babies (somewhere a demon is sighing...)