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

Yet to be Confirmed

[The Raven]

The tests seem to hold promise, but it is not confirmed yet. But if it works... ooh, the excitement. 'Free' stem cells, with no issues about embryos and cloning is a dream come true to scientists working in this field.

I wonder how long before practical applications of this research become available... five years? Ten?

Raven

Re:Patented ?

[ocie]

How many evil companies would even bother discovering things if they could not be pantented? Do you think new drugs just grow on trees?

the best news is....

[Restil]

If you donate stem cells from willing adults, you don't have all the ethical arguments you get with harvesting human embryos. Not really sure which side of that argument I fall on, but if we can avoid the argument altogether and concentrate on the science instead, things would move along faster.

Hopefully these stem cells are as useful as the embryonic ones are.

-Restil

Patent?

[crotherm]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and though the team has so far published little, a patent application seen by New Scientist shows the team has carried out extensive experiments.

If this pans out to be what they think they have, I just hope that the patent holders do not charge and arm and a leg for the world to use it. Sure growing organs and such is a longs ways off, but the potential is astounding. Some discoveries should belong to the public domain, like cures and other medical discoveries. And I understand that research costs money, but maybe we as a society would be better off if governments not spend so much on space when there are so many worthwhile medical research programs that arin dire need of funding. And if the governments fund it, then the knowledge could be public.

Re:Patent?

[the_quark]

May I point out that if medical science gets much better, we're going to need space research even more than we do now?

This is a common fallacy. No space-based expatration system is going to ship enough people off this planet to make the slightest bit of difference. There are 250,000 new people on this planet, ever single day. That is net of deaths, by the way. You'd have to be able to ship a quarter of a million people off this planet every single day (that's more than the population of New York City every year, by the way) just to keep population growth flat!

Space-based colonization is probably important to the long-term health of the species. And we need places to grow other than here. But the babies need to be born there, not here if space is going to be part of the solution.

One moral issue down, two to go.

[eAndroid]

Forgive me for pointing out the obvious but this is good for several reasons. The one I'm most pleased with is the moral aspect. Assuming this is true we no longer need to farm embryonic humans for stem cells. We can gather them (and possibly in a superior form) from consenting adults.

This may also help compatibility. If there were any problems with a replacement organ for example then this would possibly lessen the chances of rejection.

Of course this still leaves moral controversy over what is done with these stem cells - I mean, that whole human cloning thing.

Re:Patented ?

[Eslyjah]

This could be a huge brakethrough for all mankind, if they (the government) would only let us do the proper research.

What country do you live in that doesn't allow ADULT stem-cell research? Go ahead, do the research yourself in your garage...it's legal.

Premature (Cold fusion?)

[kenneth_martens]

If this turns out to be true, it would be a remarkable find. But as the article points out, this is only a preliminary report, and "the team has so far published little." They will need to carry out extensive tests and publish a lot more research before anything conclusive can be determined.

It is interesting, but I wish researchers wouldn't jump the gun and announce "findings" before research is complete. (Cold fusion, anyone?)

Moral clarity

[DaoudaW]

The article is kinda breathy, especially for New Scientist - but

I hate to disillusion you, but New Scientist is well-known for their sensationalism. If this were Nature, Science, or even Scientific American, Hemo's comment would make sense. Don't take me wrong I've enjoyed reading New Scientist for a number of years, but its niche is tabloid-style, scientific journalism. It is not a scientific journal.

If this research is valid, it is a huge breakthrough. But it means that human cloning will have to be argued for its own sake, rather than it somehow being necessary for growing spare kidneys. My concern with this is that Bush, et al, will use it to shut down cloning research altogether; they've never seemed to have any other use for cloning. On the other hand, it may allow clarity on the morality of cloning.

And who you can thank...

[Reality Master 101]

<controversial opinion>Thank the pro-life contingent for this. Yes, them. Because of the hard-line stance of many people that human life shouldn't be devalued through experimentation, there is naturally going to be a lot more research into finding adult cells that do not have the controversy attached.

Sometimes sticking to principles and not taking the easy ways out (e.g., manufacturing embryoes for experimentation) leads to very nice results.

</controversial opinion>

Re:Patented ?

[ImaLamer]

I have to second that. [mee too!]

I'm someone who relies on drugs everyday. If they weren't doing it in part for the money there would be no reason for them to continue.

I think medicine-for-profit is bad, and has denied me a lot of treatment I could have received thus far. The other half if the non-doctors making medical decisions [read: HMO].

Medicine-for-profit isn't good, but it's better than no medicine at all. Many drug companies are making moves to offer even their most expensive drugs to seniors for a low flat rate cost.

They do spend billions, if not trillions on reaserch. If they didn't, no one else would.

Considerations, Offtopically

[virg_mattes]

First off, if the pun was intentional, very good work. Second, the work would be in the public domain. They're trying to patent their extraction and enrichment process, not the research itself. Third, your logic about cutting off funding for one type of science to push it to another has two main flaws:

1.) Reducing funding for space does not necessarily translate to extending funding for medical research.
2.) What if the next big medical discovery happens in the space program? There are so many examples of this that I could go on for days, but in the "pure" sciences (as opposed to applied sciences) very often discoveries are made from which the benefit is not readily apparent, but it soon becomes something that changes the world. Perhaps the cure for cancer comes from experiments done with materials in zero-G or vacuum environments. There's no way to know, so artificially limiting venues of research because they don't have obvious connections to a particular cause is very short-sighted.

Virg

This is GOOD NEWS

[mcrbids]

One of my sons has type 1 diabetes, heretofore an incurable disease. We have to test his blood at least 3-4 times per day, and continuously administer injections. It's a hassle, it's expensive, and despite our best efforts we know that the inevitable swings of blood sugar can shorten his life, and lead to severe health complications.

There IS a cure for type 1 diabetes - recently in Edmonton, CA they "cured" about a dozen people by injecting islet cells (those that produce insulin) into the liver, along with some mild anti-immune drugs.

The anti-immune drugs are needed because the islet cells implanted are foreign.

The problem is that there aren't enough extractable islet cells in all viable cadavers in this country to cure even 1% of the diabetic population.

Under our current conservative presidency, stem-cell research involving embryos is at a near stand-still. (Only existing lines can be used, new ones cannot be created)

But if these stem cells can be trained to behave as islet cells, then my 13 year old son may well be effectively cured before he turns 20.

This is good news!

Re:Standard Fundie Alert!

[Bob Uhl]

Moron. The difference is that these can be harvested without killing the adult. Embryonic stem cells could only be harvested by slaying the embryo.

Society of biotech patents makes me skeptical

[sam_handelman]

This is excellent science journalism. I'm glad to see the concerns of more skeptical scientists covered in such a balanced fashion. Most of the time, journalists, including those at the New Scientist, breeze past highly important caveats in favor of sensationalism - I'm sure we'll see this story repeated in Pro Life literature, for example, without qualifications. Kudos to Sylvia Westphal (author of the article.)

The fact that the claims being made appear on a patent application instead of in peer-reviewed research makes me extremely skeptical. Showing such a patent application to a member of the press - but not publishing - make me even more so. A great many people (I resist the temptation to post links) involved in Biotech make grandiose claims that they cannot really back up; the huge potential rewards have certainly led to compromises of scientific ethics in the past.

Just because a scientist is fishing for venture captialists does NOT mean that she is doing bad science; it does raise legitimate suspicion about her (Dr. Catherine Verfaillie, who did the work) research.

The "agelessness" and expression of unusual combinations of extracellular markers mentioned in the article are also features common to cancer cells. It is entirely possible that the process of extracting the bone marrow has merely selected out non-tumerogenic, precancerous cells. Such cells, which may very well substitute for stem cells anyway, but probably don't, might also spread through a mouse embryo into which they were injected.

This creates an interesting senario

[Dr. Bent]

Posit:
This process works, exact replicas of human organs can be grown and implanted into patients with phenominal success.

Effect:
Millions of americans decide that quitting smoking, losing weight, and all manner of healthy activity are not worth the trouble because science can simply cure them.

Result:
Health care costs skyrocket. General levels of health decrease.

So I ask...how would we prevent this? Make smokers pay for thier own lung transplants? Alcholoics pay for their own liver?

It makes for an interesting question.

Re:This creates an interesting senario

[Hoi Polloi]

I plan on driving my car into a wall as much as possible because I can get new parts for it. Not likely due to the cost of the parts. Unless the government tries to force the cost of new body parts onto the taxpayer this would be too expensive for most people.

Just wait though, some whiny activist group backed up by biotech $ will come out and say "But what about my sick baby!? What about my 80yr old mother? These parts should be covered by Medicare!". Can't say no to that!

Re:Standard Fundie Alert!

[linzeal]

Ok, now that you have dehumanized it by mockery does that make it less human? I think not. Whether you believe it or not we all once were just like that and through gestation birth and x amount of years we are the same being. You are setting up an arbitrary age at which human life becomes valuable and it could 5 years old or 5 days old it would have as much simple but wrong justification.

Re:Standard Fundie Alert!

[Anonymous Coward]

My website does not resolve

Probably becuase it, much like you personally, is imbecilic. If you look in your TOS, there's a clause about "not wasting our bandwidth on stupid shit."

Ah, but...

[devphil]

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.

While this would be an amazing breakthrough, the donation problem would still exist. See, as a diabetic (Type I), growing a replacement pancreas from my own DNA won't help me. The replacement would be just as broken and useless as the one currently propping up my liver (or holding it down, I'm terrible at anatomy). The only thing I get out of this research is plenty of free pancreas-shaped paperweights. ("What a lovely doorstop!" "Thanks, grew it myself.")

I would need one of the super stem cells from somebody with a working pancreas in order to grow a working one of my own. Presumably this wouldn't suffer from the usual tissue rejection problems of transplants.

Re:ageless cells?

[6EQUJ5]

Don't forget, an immortal cell is... cancer. That double-edged sword again... :(

Careful here!

[HiThere]

Some ageless cells are cancer.

Some are the sources of sperm and ova.

Some are probably the source of the blood, villi, skin, etc. (Yes, there are cells that aren't totipotent that are the sources here, but they don't have any obvious aging built in.)

If there are a few totipotent stem cells in an adult, it wouldn't be any big surprise. There probably won't be many of them, as they would be (are?) quite dangerous (one little mutation and ...), but they aren't automatically cancerous.
.

Re:Standard Fundie Alert!

[Alsee]

concieved and therefore a human being because the progress from conception to death is from those same cells. You can not delineate any stages of growth where something is not a complete human.

Perhaps you can help me? I'm still a bit fuzzy on the moment life begins, the point where you have a complete human. I keep hearing "at the moment of conception", but, well, I'm still not clear on this point.

Is it when the sperm first comes in contact with the egg? Hundreds of sperm swarm the egg and try to work their way in. The first sperm to make contact isn't always the one that succedes.

Is it when the sperm and egg cell membranes begin to merge? Before the cytoplasma comes in contact?

Is it when the cytoplasma of the sperm comes in contact with the cytoplasm of the egg? Before any mixing has occured?

Is it when the sprem and egg cytoplasm mix? But the sperm DNA is still outside the nucleus, and non-functional.

Is it when the sperm's inactive DNA enters the nucleus?

Is it when the sperm DNA activates and both sets of DNA work together on protine synthesis?

Is it when the both sets of DNA begin replication?

I realize I have severely simplified the process of conception here. If you can help narrow things down, perhaps we can go into greater detail later?

Thanx!

-