This article says that stem cells can be created from existing skin tissue. Word. Obviously the impact of this is profound.
Posted by ricree101 (Member # 7749) on :
It's too early to say anything for sure, but if this pans out, it will certainly be a huge advance that will be able to deliver on the promise of stem cells without the controversy. If this does pan out, I just hope that the bad image of embryonic stem cells doesn't rub off onto this.
Posted by Leonide (Member # 4157) on :
We just discussed this the other day in my biology class. I think it's amazing how many people still think stem cells are obtained from aborted fetuses. (myself included, up until a few days ago)
This is really fascinating news!
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
There was a thread about this fairly recently, where diabetics were given an injection of blood modified by stem cells and it caused their pancreases to function properly for up to several years.
I earnestly hope that non embryonic stem cell research comes through for us all.
Posted by krynn (Member # 524) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: There was a thread about this fairly recently, where diabetics were given an injection of blood modified by stem cells and it caused their pancreases to function properly for up to several years.
I earnestly hope that non embryonic stem cell research comes through for us all.
HOLY #@*%!!! seriously? my dad and i are both diabetics. i wonder if the people that did that had to go back for follow up work and how often that was. i've never seen anything about it in our Diabetes Forecast magazine.
EDIT: can someone please give a link to that thread/article if they find it?
Posted by Qaz (Member # 10298) on :
Almost every stem-cell treatment we have comes from adult stem-cells, that is, cells taken from the patient not an embryo. There was recently an embryonic stem-cell treatment for retina function. It is the first useful thing from embryonic I have ever heard of.
We can expect the lead of adult over embryonic to continue for 2 reasons: adult stem cells don't face rejection issues, and there was another paper that showed they were able to make adult stem cells act like embryonic stem cells by some process.
I read a Newsweek article on stem cells during the '04 campaign. 8 pages, and there was no mention of adult stem-cell research in the text. In a small box, part of a big diagram on "Where stem cells come from" (showing that they come from embryos), there was a mention of adult stem cells, saying that they weren't as versatile as embryonic. That was it. This explains why most people who have heard of stem cells have never heard of adult stem cells: the media avoid mentioning them.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
sigh... A similar claim was published to the accolades of many by a SouthKorean research team not too many years ago. Except no one else could dublicate it. And recently, the team leader got flamed, fired, and prosecuted for falsifying results.
It'll happen some day. But I'd like to see if it can be repeated before it shows up as a STUPID argument against current lines of stem cell research, which did happen at least twice before that I am aware of.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
This article is a good example of how dangerous a little information can be. This is really nothing new and it doesn't particularly change anything. People have known about adult stems cells and have been working with them for a long time. But there is a big difference between adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent, that is they can be made to grow into any type of tissue whereas adult stem cells can generally only be made to grow into one type of tissue. Many different types of Adult stem cells have been found so it is now possible to use them for therapies for a variety of disorders. Unfortunately, no adult stem cells have yet been found that can be used for some crucial systems like central nervous system and heart tissue.
There has been progress in some areas, such as amniotic stem cells and perhaps the future will bring stem cell therapies for all types of tissue that don't require embryonic stem cells. So far that hasn't happened and there is not guarantee that it will ever happen.
Posted by Qaz (Member # 10298) on :
How adult stem cells can change tissue type. Year is 2002.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:This article is a good example of how dangerous a little information can be. This is really nothing new and it doesn't particularly change anything. People have known about adult stems cells and have been working with them for a long time.
Indeed, a little information can be quite dangerous. A little more information: what is being claimed is not about adult stem cells but about a process that is claimed to make embryonic stem cells (or something that at first blush seems very close to them) from adult (not adult stem) cells. In other words, if they're correct in their claims, this is not about an adult stem cells at all. It's about something new.
quote:Research reported this week by three different groups shows that normal skin cells can be reprogrammed to an embryonic state in mice1, 2, 3.
...
Last year, Yamanaka introduced a system that uses mouse fibroblasts, a common cell type that can easily be harvested from skin, instead of eggs4. Four genes, which code for four specific proteins known as transcription factors, are transferred into the cells using retroviruses. The proteins trigger the expression of other genes that lead the cells to become pluripotent, meaning that they could potentially become any of the body's cells. Yamanaka calls them induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). "It's easy. There's no trick, no magic," says Yamanaka.
The results were met with amazement, along with a good dose of scepticism. Four factors seemed too simple. And although the cells had some characteristics of embryonic cells — they formed colonies, could propagate continuously and could form cancerous growths called teratomas — they lacked others. Introduction of iPS cells into a developing embryo, for example, did not produce a 'chimaera' — a mouse carrying a mix of DNA from both the original embryo and the iPS cells throughout its body. "I was not comfortable with the term 'pluripotent' last year," says Hans Schöler, a stem-cell specialist at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster who is not involved with any of the three articles.
This week, Yamanaka presents a second generation of iPS cells1, which pass all these tests. In addition, a group led by Rudolf Jaenisch2 at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a collaborative effort3 between Konrad Hochedlinger of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Kathrin Plath of the University of California, Los Angeles, used the same four factors and got strikingly similar results.
"It's a relief as some people questioned our results, especially after the Hwang scandal," says Yamanaka, referring to the irreproducible cloning work of Woo Suk Hwang, which turned out to be fraudulent. Schöler agrees: "Now we can be confident that this is something worth building on."
The improvement over last year's results was simple. The four transcription factors used by Yamanaka reprogramme cells inconsistently and inefficiently, so that less than 0.1% of the million cells in a simple skin biopsy will be fully reprogrammed. The difficulty is isolating those in which reprogramming has been successful. Researchers do this by inserting a gene for antibiotic resistance that is activated only when proteins characteristic of stem cells are expressed. The cells can then be doused with antibiotics, killing off the failures.
Do we know that this will actually lead to stem cells that are as versatile as embryonic stem cells? No - the process needs to be replicated more and lots more work needs to be done. And, of course, this hasn't been done on human cells yet. It's a long way from curing anything.
But this is new - the last round of results failed an important test of embryonic stem cell function, and this one passed them all. Maybe new tests will find differences, but this is still an important milestone.
quote:sigh... A similar claim was published to the accolades of many by a SouthKorean research team not too many years ago. Except no one else could dublicate it. And recently, the team leader got flamed, fired, and prosecuted for falsifying results.
A modicum of research would have informed you that this has been duplicated - not extensively, but it has been duplicated.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
A lot of things are being done with stem cells now, this is just one example of some of the possibilities. I am not saying this is a success story....it's too early to say....but it raises a lot of questions and hopes.
As far as the adult stem cells....they are a great possibility, but the problem with this research is it is being done INSTEAD of other research that had much more promise. If people could simply have the option of donating embryos that would otherwise be destroyed....usually the left over materials from fertilization procedures....we would be much further along to determining if this is a valid branch of research.
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