Researchers Claim To Produce Stem Cells From Adult Cells

coljac writes: "An article in The Times on Monday details the claims of British researcher Ilham Abuljadayel who says she can produce stem cells from adult cells (in this case, white blood cells). Stem cells, the main source of which is currently human embryos, are undifferentiated cells which under the right biochemical conditions can grow into any kind of tissue cell. Stem cell research promises breakthroughs in many areas of disease (and even aging) research, but until now has been dogged by controversy because of the use of human embryos. If verified, this is a pretty exciting development."

Comments

New tissue = No tofu

[thex23]

Beyond being able to rejuvenate existing tissue (which is Very Big, don't get me wrong), this could also mean we can skip over using living beings (ie: animals) as mediums for growing tissue. We could grow replacement organs (skin, bones, muscle, etc.) without using pigs and monkeys to be the host. Just produce them in "vats" that are constantly supplied with the nutrients and drugs required.

The non-obvious importance is that we can start "growing" meat and other kinds of animal tissue (perhaps vegetable as well?) on an industrial scale...

It won't be a hundred years before we stop raising cattle, pigs, chickens, etc. and start eating artificial food that can be engineered to spec. I'm sure it would be more efficient from a thermodynamic viewpoint.

The bad news is that the rich will live forever. The good news is that you won't have to eat tofu.

Re:New tissue = No tofu

[WolfWithoutAClause]

I'm sorry this isn't correct. The jump going from stem cells (which are already available anyway although there are ethical as well as technical considerations) to growing replacement organs is actually very large.

In order to do that it is necessary to get the chemical, physical and electrical environment correct for the particular organ that you are trying to grow. You need the recipes. We don't have the recipes yet.

That's the first problem. Then there's the time problem. How long is it going to take to grow an organ big enough that you can use it?

As for living forever, that isn't clear at all. For one thing the brain cells aren't designed to reproduce at all, and once enough of them are dead you are too. Adding reproducing brain cells to an adult may well have side effects. But there are signs that it might help in some cases e.g. parkinsons but even then it doesn't seem to be a cure.

Re:Anyone see a population problem here???

[nathanh]

Do people ever stop and think about whether a given development is a good thing or not, before pushing forward on it?

Science isn't a "good" thing nor a "bad" thing, anymore than knowledge is a "good" thing or a "bad" thing. Science and knowledge and "pushing forwards" the boundaries of understanding are entirely orthogonal to concepts like "good" and "bad".

It's what people do with the knowledge that we can judge as being "good" or "bad".

Occasionally the way the science is conducted can also be seen as "good" or "bad".

But never make the mistake of thinking that science itself is "good" or "bad".

I'd hate to think that our ability to gain knowledge was restricted by anything other than intelligence and dedication.

Oh really?

[Isldeur]

I've done a "decent" amount of reading in hematology (being a 3rd med) and I can't seem to reconcile some things. Some things just don't stand up.

In blood, there are (as the article points out) a number of stem cells which, while they retain their ability to differentiate, also give off progeny as needed. These progeny are then directed, by various growth factors in turn directed by the biological needs, to differentiate into the various cells. Theoretically, all blood cells (with the exception of red blood cells or erythrocytes) retain the complete genetic code.

But I can't see how it can really be reversed. White blood cells aquire a bunch of different organelles within them depending on their decided function. Do they loose these organelles too? Or do they just regain the ability to differentiate?

What might happen is that certain regulators which prevent certain things from happening in cells may be removed.

But does anyone really think that "just" the needed things are removed? If the cells in your heart or skin suddenly regained the ability to differentiate into anything, they would still first be respective cells of those parts. My (limited) guess is that they've just removed regulating factors and that probably brings the cells closer to neoplastic (a.k.a. uncontrolled cell growth) and that's about it.

Also, some of the top hematologists would be reviewing this paper before it was "not accepted" in a number of journals. Don't you think that these journals would be aching to be the ones to publish something so legendary? In the end, I can't see how "forgetting" to add something to the media suddenly would do this. I wish they'd let out more information.

This does NOT overcome DNA aging

[Goldenhawk]

There's a little problem nobody here seems to have mentioned yet.

Experiments with Dolly (baaaaaaa) indicate that while she is a genetic copy of her "parent" donor sheep, so is the "genetic age" of her DNA.

As it turns out, DNA ages just like the rest of the body. Over time, it deteriorates and genetic errors build up. At some point (known to be around 120 years in humans) the decay begins to trigger the cell self-destruction mechanisms, even if those cells are otherwise healthy. The body begins to die one way or the other.

So the "fear" is that even perfectly cloned bodies (or body parts) are not immortal.

Who knows what dying in that fashion would be like - perfectly healthy organs, and then things begin to fail rapidly and suddenly - with little chance of repair.

Don't count on playing God - He's a lot sneakier than we suspected just a couple years ago.
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* Split Infinity Music

wouldn't reverse or prevent aging

[HomerJ]

With the execption of our teeth and eyes. We are only about 30 days old. All your old cells die, and new ones take their place. The real question on aging is, why do we even age at all? Dispite the fact that we competely replace our cells about one a month, we still age.

This could go a long way to heal things like heart disease, cancer, etc. Where the problems are they cells can't regenerate like they should. But this won't save you from aging.

NOTE: this is just what I remember from what biology I've had in the past. Anyone wants to prove me wrong, feel free.

That's been solved already.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Experiments with Dolly (baaaaaaa) indicate that while she is a genetic copy of her "parent" donor sheep, so is the "genetic age" of her DNA.

As it turns out, DNA ages just like the rest of the body. Over time, it deteriorates and genetic errors build up. At some point (known to be around 120 years in humans) the decay begins to trigger the cell self-destruction mechanisms, even if those cells are otherwise healthy. The body begins to die one way or the other.

You're confusing two mechanisms:

- Error building up.

- The protective (hayflick limit) cell-reproduction counter running out and shutting down the cells.

The site of the counter has been discovered: It's the repeating sequences on the end of the chromosomes (telomeres), which don't copy completely and get shorter with each reproduction. In the absense of an enzyme (telomerase) which adds more repeats to them, the cell reproduction stops after a certain number of copies.

There are several places in the body where the cells contain telomerase and "reset the counter". One of them is a step in producing germ cells (eggs and sperm). So the baby starts out with the counter reset. They procedure they used to make Dolly did NOT reset the counter. But it would be trivial fix that, i.e. by dosing the DNA-sample cell with the enzyme.

(While the degradation of the telomeres is apparently a consequence of the way open-ended chromosomes are copied, the lack of telomerase in most tissues appears to be a protective mechanism to reduce the cancer rate from the geneic errors you mention. To become cancer a cell must acquire errors that BOTH stick its reproduction switch "on" AND switch on the production of telomerase before it has run out the clock. If it misses the second step the tumor stops growing, typically at about the size of a pea, and may then self-destruct.)

And that's why I wonder about this research...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Alright. There is a reason that embryo stem cells are preferred: they are different.

And there are a number of possibilities for what happens as the cells differentiate. (Production of DNA-regulation enzymes, phosphorilation of DNA bases, DNA edits, folding, etc.)

If the cells were anything BUT white cells (by which I assume they mean fully-mature antibody-producing white cells), I'd be less sceptical.

One step in the maturation of white cells is the differentiation of the antibodies. This involves the deletion of two small segments of DNA in the sites corresponding to the hypervariable regions of the antibodies. This is a noisy deletion, happening differently in each of the many cells in which it occurs, leading to the variety of antibodies with which we are blessed (and sometimes cursed).

Deletions like that are NOT reversable. (They correspond to editing out a chunk of a tape recording, and reversing them would consist of figuring out the missing waveform and editing it back IN. The information is LOST, so you don't have it to put back.)

Assuming all the OTHER steps in cell differentiation from totipotent to adult are members of a limited set of easily reversable changes, applying such fixes to an adult white cell would give you something that looked very much like a stem cell, and could fix most tissues of the body. But try to replace the immune system and you find that the splices were already done. Maybe the markers that control the edits are gone, and you get all one type of antibody. Less likely: the edits still happen but the variety is greatly reduced.

Make a clone and the clone has a defective immune system. If it survives to reproduce its offspring inherit the deficit as a nasty recessive.

Nevertheless, this IS very encouraging news. It sounds like the researcher may have found a way to reverse all the non-DNA-edit differentiation steps, producing a cell that "thinks" it's a stem cell. If true, even with an antibody coding problem such a cell could be used to repair many tissue types and grow replacement organs. And once the process is understood it might be adapted to a cell type that DIDN'T have DNA edits in its differentiation history.