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Biotech Science

Embryonic Stem Cells Emit Healing Molecules 58

Posted by timothy from the not-many-babies-have-cancer dept.
gim_alelen writes "The Associated Press (found here on Salon.com) is reporting that a new study finds that embryonic stem cells, even if they may not grow new limbs and organs may have other healing properties. The study reports that embryonic stem cells emitted molecules that reversed a lethal birth defect in mice."
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Embryonic Stem Cells Emit Healing Molecules More

Embryonic Stem Cells Emit Healing Molecules

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  • Would this work on humans? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mind21_98 ( 18647 ) on Sunday October 10, 2004 @05:42PM (#10488423) Homepage Journal
    Mice and humans are different. Would this be easily extended to human embryonic stem cells? And could they emit other molecules to reverse other diseases? If so, this is a great step in the right direction.
    • The entier reason researcher use mice is because they so closely resemble humans. While we could not take the mouse cells and expect them to work, nor could we treat human cells exactly the same as the mouse cells and hope they will work, if we take human cells and treat them in a SIMILAR way, they will probably realease a SIMILAR molecule that help trigger wound healing.

      This is a proof of principal experminet NOT a clinical trial.

      This is coming from someone who does cardio-pulmonary research on mice.

  • Not that surprising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FiReaNGeL ( 312636 ) <fireang3l.hotmail@com> on Sunday October 10, 2004 @05:49PM (#10488468) Homepage
    Many cells express extracellular factors involved in regulation, growth, etc. These can be cytokines (protein-based molecules) or chemokines (small non-proteic molecules). So this discovery is not that surprising, but cool nonetheless. The 'article' (4 lines?) don't give much details, and Science magazine is subscription only... I wonder if they identified the said molecule. Would be interesting to see if it's something we already knew but involved in a process we didn't suspect, or something new altogether. Will have to go to my University library to get details I guess :(

    • Re:Not that surprising (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Rikurzhen ( 751336 ) on Sunday October 10, 2004 @08:46PM (#10489428)
      They did find the molecules involved. They are IGF-1 and WNT5a. The interesting twist was that the ES cells partially corrected the defect even if they were injected into the mother during pregnancy. The cells don't cross the placenta, rather it is the IGF-1 that does.
      • It should be noted that the mice used in this experiment were knockouts for the Id1, Id2, and Id3 genes, which causes underproliferation of myocardial cells- the walls of the heart are too thin, and the mice generally die about 13.5 days into gestation (mentioned in the Science article, but not the Salon writeup). IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor-1) and WNT5a (wingless-type, a carryover from Drosophila studies) are both relatively small proteins that act as signaling molecules which act to spur cells to g
        • Speaking as an active member of the dwarf community, I don't think IGF-1 deficient people are considered dwarfs - partially because they are all "cured" very early, and partially because they aren't as severely affected as the rest of us.
          • My apologies on the comment then- something half-remembered from an endocrinology textbook- a mention of "Laron pituitary dwarfism" being treated with recombinant IGF-1. Very sorry if I got something wrong though, and thanks for setting the record straight.
            • No prob, though there are a few of us ('us' being dwarfs or the disabled community in general) with a chip on the shoulder, that's the exception.

              The distinction is basically that medically they are dwarfs (short statured if not treated), but since they have few/no symptoms when treated, they aren't really part of the community.

  • Adult Stemcells work just as fine (Score:3, Insightful)

    by genrader ( 563784 ) on Sunday October 10, 2004 @06:03PM (#10488554) Homepage Journal
    If we could allowocate all the money going to embryonic stem cells to adult stem cells, bam, problem solved and no ethic problems with lots of people.

    They found out you can extract adult stemcells from fat recently, and god knows we have plenty of that in America.
    • If that's true, then I oughta be practically immortal!

      Seriously, this science is clearly in its infancy. It will be great when (if) cures are developed from it, but I suspect it will be a while before any concrete applications start showing up.

    • Here is plenty of information for anyone who wants it.

      http://www.stemcellresearch.org/ [stemcellresearch.org]

    • Re:Adult Stemcells work just as fine (Score:5, Funny)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Sunday October 10, 2004 @11:50PM (#10490249) Homepage Journal
      "If we could allowocate all the money going to embryonic stem cells to adult stem cells"

      That's unpossible!
    • If we could allowocate all the money going to embryonic stem cells to adult stem cells, bam, problem solved and no ethic problems with lots of people.

      Hey, that would be great, but if you redirect all money from embryonic stem cell research to adult stem cell research, you might miss many opportunities for cures.

      Embryonic stem cells may be able to do things which adult stem cells cannot. I don't see adult stem cells spawning new life, for example.

      The field is so new that it is quite impossibile to know
      • grow cancer tumors.

        That has been the closest that scientists have gotten in fulfilling their previous promises. I am not an embryonic stem cell researcher so I don't even pretend to know. But I do know that we have put more government money into embryonic stem cell research than adult stem cell research. Now the medical companies that want to make money off of these discoveries are concentrating on adult stem cell research. I wonder why that is. My guess, they have decided there is a greater chance of a b
        • But I do know that we have put more government money into embryonic stem cell research than adult stem cell research.

          Not true. Current NIH funding for ES cell research is very small as compared to adult stem cell research. Both of which are very small as compared to other research fields.

          We (the people) are no longer wasting money to research how to create new "lines" and now spending our money on researching actual uses of the existing lines.

          Unfortunately, the existing lines are not sufficient f
    • Not really. Adult stem cells are MUCH more limited than embryonic. No matter what you do, adult stem cells will never be able to do as much. But with adult stem cells you don't have problems with rejection like you can by taking another persons stem cells.

      Actually I am going to grad school to study stem cells. My thesis is going to be directed at turning adult stem cells INTO embryonic stem cells.

      Unfortunetly we need a LOT more information on both adult and embryonic stem cells. But when we can do t

  • more info (Score:4, Informative)

    by v1x ( 528604 ) on Sunday October 10, 2004 @06:24PM (#10488662) Homepage
    NewScientist has some more info [sciam.com] on this.
    • I'm sorry, that was on Scientific American, NOT on New Scientist (too many tabs open in FireFox to keep track)

  • Health Packs (Score:5, Funny)

    by St. Arbirix ( 218306 ) <matthew DOT townsend AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday October 10, 2004 @06:49PM (#10488816) Homepage Journal
    In wars of the future soldiers will have to wander around the battlefield picking up increasingly more devastating weapons and ammo left lying around and collecting packs of emryonic cells to bring their life back up to 100.
  • But this doesn't answer the fundamental question associated with embryonic stem cell research: does a human life have intrinsic value? Is that intrinsic value higher or lower than the value of the stem cells that result when an embryo is destroyed?

    Yes, yes. I know that some high proportion (10%? 50%? pick the study that best supports your point of view) of embryos do not implant in the womb and are lost. Does that mean we can treat embryos as analogous to acorns?

    Yes, yes. There are hundreds of thousan

    • Re:How Handy... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I refuse to accept that life exists until it can carry on a conversation. No, really, we should go a bit further: life doesn't exist until it learns to drive. Of course, that would include teenagers and THEY certainly shouldn't count as life. No, I think we should define life to include moving out of the house, graduating college, and getting a job. Well, even then, I know some grad students who shouldn't count...

    • Re:How Handy... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Gorath99 ( 746654 ) on Sunday October 10, 2004 @08:48PM (#10489443)
      If you're an atheist (as I am) how can you defend any view other than "as soon as it's a zygote (a DNA pattern separate from the mother's and the father's) it's a person"? If you're the final arbiter of morality (as an atheist is to himself) how can you fudge this one?

      I'm an atheist (well, agnostic to be precise, but the end effect is pretty much the same) and a zygote is not a person to me. In fact, DNA really doesn't figure into my definition of a person. (What about clones? They have the same DNA as someone else, but they are persons in their own right.)

      To me, a person at the very least needs to be capable of independent cognitive processing of some sort. Unfortunately, what exactly constitutes independent cognitive processing is something that I don't have a clear answer on yet, but it's something that a zygote, being only a single cell, isn't yet capable of, while an advanced foetus is.
      • To back you up, I'd point out that the question "where's the line" is almost impossible to answer exactly - but we can see vaguely where it is. It's like saying, "when did modern man arise" - we don't have a single year, but a range of several thousand years.

        And are you actually agnostic, or a weak atheist? Look at Wikipedia's article on atheists [wikipedia.com] if you're not sure.
        • Good point and interesting question. I was not aware of the distinction between weak and strong atheism. I suppose that at the moment I am actually a weak atheist, having over the years gone from christian to agnostic to now a weak atheist.

          Thank you for clearing that up, even though it means I may have lost an interesting conversation hook :-)

    • Re:How Handy... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Xybot ( 707278 ) on Sunday October 10, 2004 @09:20PM (#10489647)
      Why not leave it up to the individual to decide? According to your argument any cell capable of growing into an autonomous human being is designated as a seperate life. How do you differentiate this from lost blood from a cut finger, I'm sure that each of these cells could be used to create a new life (albeit a cloned life). Why does the DNA Sequence necessarily have to be different in order to qualify a cell as a seperate life?

      This whole area elicits so much controversy, I really doubt it will ever be possible to find a a solution that will keep everyone happy.

      Personally I feel that as an adult and a responsible individual the choices I make regarding my bio-chemistry should be mine and mine alone. It should be my decision as to what I do with my Biology and the Biology of any potentially autonomous lifeforms I may be responsible for, and when there is a decision concerning a second person, then a consensus should be reached with this person.

      The key to this type of decision making for individuals lies in education and rationalism. These are the types of choices that need to be taught in schools. If people want to make a moral choice for themselves based on these viewpoints, that's fine. But their ideas should not be forced upon others.

      • Re:How Handy... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by LordLucless ( 582312 ) on Monday October 11, 2004 @02:22AM (#10490894)
        Why not leave it up to the individual to decide? According to your argument any cell capable of growing into an autonomous human being is designated as a seperate life. How do you differentiate this from lost blood from a cut finger, I'm sure that each of these cells could be used to create a new life (albeit a cloned life). Why does the DNA Sequence necessarily have to be different in order to qualify a cell as a seperate life?

        Actually, a blood cell cannot grow into an autonomous human - it is already differentiated, it can't grow into anything apart from a blood cell. It is possible, however, that scientists could take that cell, extract its DNA, stick it into an undifferentiated cell, and grow a genetically identical human being - but that hardly qualifies as a "cell capable of growing into an autonomous human being" does it?

        The DNA sequence doesn't have to be different in order for it to be a distinct human life - I don't think you could find many people who would claim identical twins are really one entity.

        It's a distinct consciousness that diferentiates two entities, but unfortunately, we haven't found a way to measure the soul yet (Feel free to insert scientific nomenclature - "locus of awareness" maybe - if you don't like soul).

        Personally I feel that as an adult and a responsible individual the choices I make regarding my bio-chemistry should be mine and mine alone. It should be my decision as to what I do with my Biology and the Biology of any potentially autonomous lifeforms I may be responsible for, and when there is a decision concerning a second person, then a consensus should be reached with this person.

        You say you can make decisions for the biology of any potential autonomous lifeforms you are responsible for. But when does "potential" become "actual"? That's what the whole debate hinges on. Many people believe that a foetus *is* an actual lifeform, not merely one in potential. And, as there is little evidence on either side, it is a perfectly valid belief.

        It's not really a choice for the individual, any more than the decision on the morality of murder is. The morality of the situation is contingent upon one question - "Is a foetus a human being?" If the answer is yes, then it is morally equivelant to murder. If the answer is no, then it is not. So far, rationalism has yet to provide an answer to that question, which is why debate still rages.

        The key to this type of decision making for individuals lies in education and rationalism. These are the types of choices that need to be taught in schools. If people want to make a moral choice for themselves based on these viewpoints, that's fine. But their ideas should not be forced upon others.

        Sorry, but that's just wrong. It's fine for individuals to make decisions regarding actions which directly affect only them. But if an action would harm another, that's when law intervenes and forces its morals upon the individual. And that's as it should be.
      • consider the following argument: when it is deemed time to "pull the plug" on an incapacitated patient, what is the criteria? the answer is that there must be no possible way for the nervous system of that person to operate. whether the person is missing limbs, organs or tissues does not matter. what matters is if the nervous system is non-functioning or non-existent. the same should be applied when trying to define the point at which something that is living becomes an actual "life". and that point s
    • But at what point does it cease to be disposable parts of my wife and me and start being a separate human?

      When it could be born, and live. Sounds pretty simple and reasonable to me, but then again I'm not a religious nut, as it seems so many in the US are.
    • Well maybe it would be ok to use stem cells harvested(i.e. 7 of 8) if someone grown from the remaining stem cells (genetic twin) and alive gave permission to use them ?

    • But at what point does it cease to be disposable parts of my wife and me and start being a separate human?

      Certainly there's no meaningful human prior to there being a functioning human brain - brainwaves start in the third trimester, IIRC, right about when the fetus is viable.

      Probably there's not a meaningful human until some point after the brain has started to receive and correlate input, that is some point well after birth.

      "as soon as it's a zygote (a DNA pattern separate from the mother's and t

    • does a human life have intrinsic value?

      I think it is pure hubris to be debating this question as we continue as a species to murder each other over resources and/or political gain. By continuing such struggles, we have implicitly decided that human life has no value. Until we move past this as a species and a society, how can we be arrogant enough to decide otherwise?

      Yeah, son, we could have aborted you as a fetus, but we didn't because we value life. Now, go kill those brown-skinned people over there for

    • DNA has got nothing to do with it. Whats at issue here is the human mind. Unfortunately athiests have no clue how a human mind comes about, and religeous people leave it in the hands of their god (presumably). Which leaves us in a sticky situation. I know that I am a self aware entity. Presumably other adult humans are too. We can all remember being self aware as children, so they must be too. Starting from the other end of the scale, it seems rather unlikley that a single cell is self aware. Or even two
    • I assume you're against in vitro, then? 'Cuz if not, I'd say, as soon as you're done impregnating your wife, at the point where (currently) the doctor will flush them down the drain, that's when they're fair game for this kind of research.
  • Weird - I was just reading this when the news anchor woman on telly said Christopher Reeve had died. Is this true?

  • New Spam this week: (Score:3, Funny)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Monday October 11, 2004 @02:16AM (#10490884) Journal
    Before that - I feel that all those less plausible parts of sci-fi where the rich swap bodies and stay young, are getting more and more plausible each day.

    The spam:

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  • Cannot wait 'til I can buy that "Healium" at the local drug store. Ultima players may buy it in blue glass bottles. Doom-fans prefer boxes with a large red cross on top.

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