Ultimate Stem Cell Discovered

bofh31337 writes "Newscientist is reporting that the University of Minnesota has discovered a new stem cell in adults. It is thought this stem cell will be able to turn into any single tissue in the body." The article is kinda breathy, especially for New Scientist - but if this is true, which needs to be studied more, this will dramatically alter the landscape for stem cell research.

Comments

Re:ageless cells?

[boaworm]

Most cell knows when it is going to die. Our skincells for example are programmed to die after about 7 weeks, in this way, the skin does refresh itself and you have a nice healthy skin.
So.. if you clone a cell that is already say 3 weeks old, all clones from that cell will start of at the age of 3 weeks, having only 4 weeks left to live until "terminated".
This is what happened to Dolly, the cloned Sheep. Dolly's cells started of with the same biological clock as her "mother" (herself ? ;), so she is "ageing" very fast to catch up with herself.

Re:ageless cells?

[Anonymous Coward]

incidentally, this is what cancer does. it prevents the shortening of the telomeres, so cells that have turned cancerous don't "die".

Link to the researcher

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

http://www.micab.umn.edu/faculty/Verfaillie.html

and an abstract of one stem cell paper is at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cm d= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11458512&dopt=Abstrac t

"selection process [may actually create] the MAPCs

[Cy Guy]

"others think the selection process actually creates the MAPCs.

I don't think there is 'a cell' that is lurking there that can do this. I think that Catherine has found a way to produce a cell that can behave this way," says Neil Theise of New York University Medical School.

If this turns out to be the case rather than the cell naturally occurring in bone marrow, it has tremendous implications from a patent perspective. Since you cannot patent a naturally occuring object, anyone who could reverse engineer the selection process would be able to produce these cells. But if it is the process itself that transforms otherwise non stem-cell behaving cells into MAPC's then process itself would be patentable and I believe even if you reverse engineered it you would be expected pay royalties. Since claims like "cell lines have been growing for almost two years . . .with no signs of ageing" could herald this find as biomedical fountain of youth, the raoyalties could be astronomical, especially when used for non-life-threatening conditions.

WOW, who would have thought that the fountain of youth, and a source of infinite free power would be announced on the same day?

Re:ageless cells?

[myc]

aging in cells, at a molecular level, usuallly means a shortening of telomeres from one generation to the next. This typically has other consequences as well, such as cell cycle arrest.

telomeres are special structures at the end of eukaryotic chromosomes that protect the ends and facilitate DNA replication of linear DNA. cells that have circular genomes (such as bacteria) do not have DNA ends and therefore do not have nor need telomeres. old cells have short telomeres and therefore have a harder time replicating their DNA. This is an overly simplified explanation, of course.

Re:the best news is....

[Saige]

Well, the big point from this research may be that the only person needed to "donate" the stem cells may be the exact person needing the treatment. If every adult human being has these stem cells, then there is the possibility for a person to grow cells (or organs or such) from their very own cells, with their very own DNA.

This not only avoids most of the ethical problems completely, it should eliminate any worries about rejection of the new cells, since there isn't a difference between them and the ones already there.

I hope this turns out to be true, this would be so huge for curing diseases, reparing damage caused by accidents or neglect, and in general really helping to increase human longevity.