Embryonic Stem Cell Retinal Implants Seem Safe, So Far 91
An anonymous reader writes "A biotechnology company said Monday that results from the world's first human trial using embryonic stem cells to treat eye diseases suggested that the new procedure appears to be safe four months after the cells were injected into the eyes of two blind patients. The study also describes visual improvements in patients, and experts said the findings hold promise for treating blindness in patients with currently incurable conditions like age-related macular degeneration in older patients and Stargardt's Disease, a main cause of blindness in young people."
This is truly good news (Score:1)
We're still way behind in visual prosthesis, so retinal regeneration is our best bet right now. I'm glad to hear this.
Re:This is truly good news (Score:5, Insightful)
The eye is a very complex organ though, so we would be behind. I'm glad to see progress, but even so, 4 months is a little short-term to say "no bad health effects". Given the cells are embryonic stem cells, I'm more concerned with the 10-20 year range.
I have one of the issues listed, and I seriously hope that they can do something about it, I'd prefer a biological rather than mechanical solution, however, four months is not a lot of time, especially when you are messing with something as important as the sense of sight.
Re:This is truly good news (Score:5, Funny)
[...] I'm glad to see progress [...]
I see what you did there. Oh wait...
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[...] I'm glad to see progress [...]
Eye see what you did there. Oh wait...
FTFY
Re:This is truly good news (Score:5, Insightful)
While sight certainly is important, these kinds of treatments are so new that we can't really predict how long we'll actually have to watch before we really know for sure. It could be the case that in another week the new retinal tissue is chemically indistinguishable from what should have been there, or they might already be—that is, after all, the point of this trial, which is really more of an experiment.
Suppositionally, though: given how the vision system develops in human infants, though, I would actually say that three years is probably enough time to be sure one of these treatments was a complete success. When people experience 5-10 year life spans after heart transplants, that's generally because of ancillary factors (replacement heart quality, vessels elsewhere in the body weakened by the same thing that led to the first heart giving out...) and not really the fault of the surgery (well, unless the weak spot is the point of fusion on the vessels.) Rejection happens pretty quick by comparison.
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err, you are right, the eyes or one of the first things to fully develop aren't they? I forgot about that. It's been too long.
With the use of stem cells especially since the differentiation and growth related factors won't be there in the same amounts as during development, i'd still be worried about things like cancer. Chances are, in an adult, they'll be missing the growth factors that would, nominally, cause those issues, but I'd still be a bit skeptical.
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It's ok. I don't remember much about my eyes developing either. In my defense, I was young at the time.
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Yeah, Some of those issues (or very similar issues) could affect people as early as their 20s, in these cases, it would be very relevant. Test treatments like this, aren't as much focused on the current patients, but on prospective patients.
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Shit, do you think I want every chick I look at to know I'm zooming in on her boobs?
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Re:This is truly good news (Score:5, Informative)
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If an embryo is a person, then every post-pubescent, pre-menopausal woman on Earth kills a person every month.
Fortunately, embryos are not people, so half of the 7 billion people on Earth are not, in fact, guilty of mass murder.
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Your ignorance is astounding. Please brush up on basic human reproduction before commenting here. Here's a hint: unfertilized egg != embryo.
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Not really. It is more like what the Chinese allegedly do to some of their prisoners (killing & harvesting their organs). The difference? Cadavers used for medical research are from people who died from some external effect (disease, accident). Embryos used to make stem cells would not die if they were implanted...in fact, they would grow and be born just like everyone else.
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So? the fact is they are going to be thrown away. SO do we throw them away, or do we use them for science?
They are the byproduct of artificial insemination.
Plus, they aren't people, any more then your sperm is a person.
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Your statement comparing embryos to sperm is either a demonstration of profound ignorance of the process of human reproduction, or else just a willful disregard of fact. When do you think human personhood actually begins?
Let's try a thought experiment. Let's say that there are 10 embryos, all the product of artificial insemination. Five are used to create stem cells and in the process are killed. The other five are "rescued" and implanted in an adoptive mother's uterus and brought to full term.
Now, ten
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It's more than just "when", if fact "when" is only coincidental. It's a question of multiple aspects of "what". First, healthy human embryos have the potential to become human beings. Human beings are more important than dogs (more important to human beings, that is). Second, at early stages, embryos have nowhere near the abilities of even newborn dogs, yet we're willing to kill the occasional dog in the interests of science (that is to say, in the interests of improving the life of humans.) At what stage o
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You didn't exactly come out and say, but it seems to me that you are saying that embryos are in fact not human beings. That's a valid point of view, although one I don't agree with. Once you've made that determination, it really shouldn't matter whether or not the embryo is outside a woman's uterus or not.
It is also irrelevant whether or not it takes "positive action" for the embryo to continue to develop; that is also true for newborn infants (they must be kept warm, fed, etc., or they will die quite q
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The implant rate on IVF i've heard is about 10%. That would mean that, if put through the IVF procedure, only 1/10th of them would proceed onto person hood.
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But this presumes that embryos aren't already persons before they're implanted. Again, my question is: when do you think we become persons?
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My opinion is that person hood begins when an embryo enters into a situation that, given the maintenance of the status quo (no miscarriages, terminal genetic diseases etc), will develop into a human being. This is strictly my opinion, based off the logic that if the embryo does not yet have the potential to become a person in it's current environment, given the high failure rate of IVF, we shouldn't assume that every embryo is a human because 90% of them will never have the chance to become one, even if imp
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Embryos are not people, and neither are corporations.
The USA and their Supreme Court are an embarrasment to humanity.
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It's irrelevent because we are talking about cells in a petri dish, not a 9 months fetus.
It's a extreme and irrelevant emotional appeal. Shame on you.
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So if an embryo is not a person, then when does "it" become a person, in your opinion? Do you know the answer? If you are not sure, then why are you willing to risk being wrong?
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No, you are confused. The cells extracted from the embryo are grown in a petri dish into a sheet. But the embryo itself is killed in the process.
This still doesn't answer my original question: when in the process from conception to birth do you think the embryo/fetus become a person? That is the ultimate question that must be answered if we are to determine if embryonic stem cell research is ethical or not.
And if the question cannot satisfactorily be answered, in my opinion we should err on the side o
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Personhood is not a binary condition. During the process of development from a single cell to an adult, the degree of personhood (full humanity) increases. If an individual gets a disease that eats away his brain until he loses all contact with the world, his personhood decreases.
The question is not "is this a person", but "in the full context of what this life is, what it can do and what is required to keep it alive and well, is it enough of a person to say it has a certain degree of rights, and how much e
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I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this one. In my opinion, a philosophy that allows for a "sliding scale" of personhood will always lead to horrific abuses, as has been shown throughout human history.
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Without a doubt we are harvesting people to get embryonic stem cells.
These embryos (not fetuses) would be destroyed if not donated to science.
Just saying.
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Re:This is truly good news (Score:4, Interesting)
I, too, reject the notion that at some magical instant, the embryo becomes a fetus. It's a very gradual process, in the first few hours of which, you've definitely got a lump of undistinguished cells, and 9 months later, you've definitely got a living thing (assuming everything goes ok). There's a lot of grey area, and drawing a line is a vast oversimplification.
Fact of the matter is, we're talking about embryos that are slated for destruction. We're talking about preserving those to save / better future lives. We aren't going around harvesting fetuses.
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It's not a gradual process at all. It's nearly instantaneous.
Contradiction.
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If an embryo becomes a "person" at conception, then the concept of "person" is severely degraded. With regard to what it can do at conception, a person is then inferior to any animal that doesn't attack human beings and any plant that can be safely eaten or used as a building material. It is only potential that gives an embryo at conception even hypothetical value. If you consider that the embryo might develop into a mass-murderer or a Bernie Madoff, demanding that it be brought to term because it has value
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The GP used the phrase "50-150 undifferentiated cells". Does that mean there are no brain cells? And if so, do you still claim this is a person (rather than a clump of biological matter with the potential to be a person if it can reach a womb, etc)?
Unless we're going to invoke "souls", my demarcation point between person and non-person would have to be some degree of brain structure/activity (exactly what degree is a whole other ball of squick).
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"Value" is not a concept that exists outside of a context. A value (I'm not considering the sense of value="what I want" here) is something that helps to achieve a goal or supports a person's well-being (which, although somewhat static, is also a goal). For example, a car is of value to getting to the hardware store, food is of value to my life. Walls are of value toward the goal of keeping roofs off the ground.
Life, in and of itself, is not a value, it is the context within which living things have values.
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Dear AC, whether or not we have souls, your statements assume we're people at conception because we have souls at conception because we're people at conception... you might want to examine the fallacy of Circular Reasoning [wikipedia.org].
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""embryo" and "fetus" is an arbitrary time interval "
no, it' not arbitrary. The fact that you don't understand that means you point of view is worthless.
It's based on Human embryogenesis. Look it up.
"For example, at week 5 the embyo has a heartbeat. At week 7 the head eyes develop. Week 9 brings toes, eyelids, and ears form. "
So?
" in the eyes of the U.S. Supreme Court, a person when gestating within a woman."
link.
"if they're people within the womb, they're still people outside the womb."
courts do not equal
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If I remember correctly, only about 10% of fertilized eggs make it to implantation in IVF. I'm not sure if it's terribly higher than that for natural conception, but with such a dismal rate i'd say that the vast majority of embryos, if defined as people, essentially die of starvation. However, I doubt this fact is widely publicised.
However, due to the need to reconcile this with myself, I would call an embryo a fetus once it successfully implants onto a womb. Without a womb, there is no chance at life. And
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The eye is a very complex organ though, so we would be behind. I'm glad to see progress, but even so, 4 months is a little short-term to say "no bad health effects". Given the cells are embryonic stem cells, I'm more concerned with the 10-20 year range.
I have one of the issues listed, and I seriously hope that they can do something about it, I'd prefer a biological rather than mechanical solution, however, four months is not a lot of time, especially when you are messing with something as important as the sense of sight.
From the actual researchers, they have two major concerns - 1) whether the treatment is permanent and 2) rejection issues. Both are long term concerns like the 10-20 year range you worry about. With regards for the rejection issues, they are quite confident that they will be able to repeat the results using stem cells derived from the patient's skin.
They say they didn't go this route, even though less risky to the patient, because their grant was specifically to use embryonic stem cells in the treatment.
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Rejection is hardly a 10-20 year worry either, either the medicines handle it, or they don't. Although unlikely, potential cancer issues are a bigger concern, and I'm not sure "rejuvenated" (i.e. usually demethlyated) highly differentiated cells are going to be much better.
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The eye is a very complex organ though, so we would be behind. I'm glad to see progress, but even so, 4 months is a little short-term to say "no bad health effects". Given the cells are embryonic stem cells, I'm more concerned with the 10-20 year range.
As someone also suffering from one of the diseased potentially cured by this, I may not be ready to wait up to twenty years for long-term results, since I may very well be blind by then, thank you very much. With that said, four months is a very short time.
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That has, historically, been a major issue with using them. If you can get the little things to grow at all, they have a nasty tendency to exercise their pluripotent tendencies
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what is the worst can happen... (Score:1)
...if it don't work, you go blind?
to my understanding, these folks are either already blind or going to be if untreated. between going/state blind versus gambling for a cure or going blind, I think being able to roll the dice is a good thing. do we really need to wait 10-20 year before approving a treatment that in the worst case cannot make it worst than what the patient is already now?
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"Given the cells are embryonic stem cells, I'm more concerned with the 10-20 year range."
wha? what do you think you will suddenly give birth to your own twin?
And then he will builds a cyborg suit and try to kill you?
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4 months is a little short-term to say "no bad health effects".
Er, if you're going blind anyway I'd think it was worth the risk, or I'd not have gotten my CrystaLens implant.
I agree about the biological vs mechanical, provided the biological is from your own tissues (like this research) and not from a cadaver. I have a friend with donated corneas (and a donated liver) who has to take anti-rejection drugs the rest of his life. All other things being equal, I'd rather not have to take pills every day. I'm ver
Re:This is truly good news (Score:5, Informative)
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... helps reduce the cognitive load to something we can fully utilize.
Ah, the concept behind Peril Sensitive Sunglasses. Glad to see that nature figured it out first.
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Not quite, although there's a better invention on the market: sunglasses pained black. Because we're all technically always in peril, and life is hard enough as it is.
How neocognitrons (and to some extent the human visual cortex) actually work is that they crunch down a bunch of dots into progressively more meaningful shapes; e.g. if you see three black pixels next to each other on a white background, it can simplify that into a more complex representation that means there's a horizontal line at that positi
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we're always in peril? what do you do for a living, attach lasers to sharks that aren't sdeiatd in an underwater mine field...while fighting of Aquaman?
Always in peril, sheesh.
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We're still way behind in visual prosthesis
Only where the retina is concerned, and they've come a long, long way with that, too. I was extremely nearsighted all my life, 20/400, until I got a CrystaLens, (an artificial lens capable of focusing)implaned in my left eye in 2006. That eye is now 20/16, far better than normal vision. I used to wear contacts, and used reading glasses as well, now I need no corrective lenses at all! It also curres farsightedness (even age-related; I turn 60 this year), astigmatism
"Improved Slightly"? (Score:2)
Researchers said that the procedure seemed to be safe and no signs of rejection or abnormal cell growth had been observed, and results show that patients’ vision improved slightly.
Can anyone do a better job of defining what exactly that means? Can they see some light now? Shapes? What?
Re:"Improved Slightly"? (Score:4, Informative)
my mom has macular degeneration (Score:3)
And I am excited about this research, but I would be much more interested in IPS stem cells. You see, my mom is one of those "abortion is bad m'kay?" Types who would oppose getting this treatment on moral grounds if the transplant wasn't cultured from her own tissue.
She scientifically savvy enough to know the difference.
(She does have a biology degree.)
I understand that this is a preliminary trial, but given the information we know about embryonic stem cells and the risks of developing teratomas, cancer and tissue rejection from them, in addition to the ethical concerns, shouldn't the limited supply of embryonic cell lines remain in research labs, and out of patients?
Using totipotent cells cultured from screend ips cells, guided in a petri dish to become macular precursor cells seems a more sensible solution, given that you reduce the risk of anomalous tissue growths (hair, etc...), reduce and or eliminate rejection, and the extended culture time let's you spot cancer precursor cells in the culture prior to transplant.
Or am I missing something here?
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There is no doubt that embryonic stemcells can theoretically cure any age related degenerative disorder, and a number of genetically inherited degenerative disorders.
Afterall, if left alone, these cells produce entire functioning bodies.
The problem comes from understanding the complex game of chemical "charades" these cells play with one another to control the way the cells differintiate.
I have no qualms about them being studied in a laboratory to unlock those secrets, but blindly injecting them into patien
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That does help, but the title is misleading. Embrionic stemcells are usually implied to be the pluripotent kind.
This is an interesting development, as it means the researchers were successful in reliably creating retinal epithelial cells from such a culture.
This increases my excitement about the trial. I still don't see why they elected to use an embryonic line instead of a host derived ips line.
A prior poster commented that it was due to the wording of their trial's funding, which is why I ask. Why was the
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The retinal cells of interest are neurons. Neurons differentiate very early in development - to my knowledge no one has yet developed an IPS that can reliably be made to differentiate into high-quality neurons.
As to scarcity, in order to maintain the totipotentency of the existing lines my understanding is that they _must_ be divided occasionally (early blastocyte stage I think), or they devolve into pluripotent cells. The process generates spares by its very nature.
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Not purpetually. Normal (non cancerous) cell lines can only be divided 50 times before reaching senecense.
An aging stemcell line can only be reprimed that way for so long before the cells just sit in the dish and do nothing.
"A biotechnology company said... (Score:3)
It's more profitable to treat the ailment than to cure it? I sure hope they don't pull a 'Geron'. [businessweek.com] Give them a few more months to solidify their findings ...
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"It's more profitable to treat the ailment than to cure it?"
except that's false in most cases, and i other case would rely on the current CEO and board being so kind, that let either their competitors discover it, or let the next generation of board member/CEO reap the benefits.
Geron is about running out of money, nothing more.
If there therapy worked, the share price would have gone through the roof as stock holders abandon there current companies to grab part of the cure.
The CEO would have gotten a big pha
Can You Imagine? (Score:2)
Re:Can You Imagine? (Score:5, Interesting)
Many of the ethical concerns over embryonic cells would be ended if the collection method was nondestructive.
The problem was hamfisted legislation that treats embryonic blast collection as being equal to murdering babies.
There are single cell extraction techniques which allow cells to be nondestructively collected. This process is used in screening for ivf, prior to embryo selection. (This is how they pick only safe embryos, and not ones likely to produce children with developmental disorders.)
I would rather see legislation prohibiting destructive collection, than against any collection at all.
The issue here, is that we have cells previously collected using the destructive methods prior to the moratorium sitting in freezers, when those tissues could be used for fundamental research.
It is my understanding that demand for these lines is high, as many cultures were co-cultured with mouse tissue for purposes of expediency. This limits the number of "purely human" cultures that are suitale for medical research to a much smaller subset of the already limited cell lines available. (Note, the mouse contaminated lines are not genetically blended. They are just heterogenous.)
What I would personally like to see is an end to the moratorium on federal funding for embryonic cells, with the provision that all NEW lines be derived nondestructively.
Doing that would radically reduce the ethical concerns surrounding their use.
Our ability to create, use, and evaluate adult stemcells is directly tied to the fundamental research done with embryonic ones.
However, I don't support your position on unfettered research. To me that opens far too big of a pandora's box into the realm of public health. Oversight and good proceedure are vital to good research.
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All that is because religious people aren't content to keeping to themselves, they want to force everyone else to their antiquated black and white views.
See: Big Bang, evolution, AGW.
Soon.. (Score:1)
Seem safe, so far... (Score:2)
That's what my doctor told me three weeks ago before I started growing a FETUS IN MY E Y E ! ! !
I'm looking forward to teeth (Score:2)