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

Stem cells from Liposuction can be used too

[Therin]

One other very promising source of stem cells is from liposuction - check out StemSource for details

Re:Stem cells from Liposuction can be used too

[4of12]

One other very promising source of stem cells is from liposuction

This is GREAT NEWS!!!

I know of a great many people with plentiful supplies of fat cells that would be raring to go, donating them to science, or to helping to replicate a new liver. Heh, especially after the liver got so trashed in conjunction with the accumulation of a massive beer belly (see, it all fits together).

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

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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!

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.