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Scientists Claim Organs Grown From Stem Cells
Llywelyn writes: "It appears that some scientists in the United States are claiming that they have been able to grow functional organs (kidneys) from cloned cow embryotic stem cells. They have not yet released details on how exactly they did this, nor have they yet provided evidence for their claims, but admit to being only in the `proof of concept' phase in research. I guess we'll see down the road if this is legit or the increasingly common `Science by Press Release.'"
I've done it, and you can't see my evidence!
Sorry, can't consider it news until we see evidence.
For all we know, they are raving lunatics, or just getting media attention for more grant money.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Maybe...
Pedro Côrte-Real.
"I guess we'll see down the road if this is legit or the increasingly common `Science by Press Release."
After consulting the magic 8 ball, I have to say the latter is probably true.
I would guess that money got a little tight and this is a good way to get more cash for research...
Or, could be I am tired of hearing about companies that make claims with no proof.
Sent from your iPad.
This company is the same one that claimed to have cloned human embryos, so we're already aware of their preference of press releases to peer-reviewed journals.
all of my organs were grown from stem cells.
My mom didn't even need a petri dish.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
It appears that some scientists in the United States are claiming that they have been able to grow functional organs (kidneys) from cloned cow embryotic stem cells.
Hmm i can see it now.... a can of spam that refills itself after you've eaten it...
I've found a way to transfer a googol of data in one second. I'm not ready to release a product yet, or hold public or private demos. But I can tell you that we've done some preliminary experiments involving filling a semi with CDRs and transporting the data for several feet. All we need to do is to refine the process so it doesn't require a 18 wheeler and trillions of CDRs and we'll have a revolutionary product. At out current rate we should have something by Q1 2003.
You can become a part of this exciting development by sending $100,000,000.00 to PayPal account #235224975645.
I should start answering those emails that promise me a brand new organ? I always thought it was a sex thing.
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
The news come from ATC, the same company that pretended having cloned a human in november. However, these claims were probably premature. We should be skeptical about this kidney thing... publishing fist in New Scientist is not exactly standard for serious scientific results.
My take on this "science by press release" is that they are doing it for political reasons. Stem cell research is controversial, and they want to campaign in favor of it by showing the public that it can have huge benefits. Imagine if everyone that had kidney trouble was able to get a transplant! Now doesn't that make you want to support stem cell research?
British kidney experts are sceptical about the possibility that ACT has re-created the kidney in its entirety. ... It is possible that the company had made a simpler structure that could still produce urine, he said.
Even a incomplete organ would be better than nothing if it results in better treatment than dialysis every few days.
although this announcement seems a bit early on the research curve for me right now. I suppose an organ like a kidney would be slightly easier than a section of intestine, or something like that.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
That the scientists are keeping their data and techniques close to their chest is no great surprise. I do the same thing with my research data when it is an incomplete state, because you can't risk someone with better resources stealing your idea and taking the credit. It is a sorry state of affairs, and really just an indication of how all science will eventually end up. More and more PhD students are having to sign secrecy agreements with the people that fund them. Information flows (of useful data) will end up less than they are now in the future because of this. Information Superhighway, BAH!
But I refuse to share my results or make them available in any way for peer review, because I have chosen money over credibility within the scientific community.
Seriously, there are good reasons the established scientific publishing system esists. Results are published and processes are defined for peer review in order to confirm findings. This is a perfectly reasonable and effective process that has worked for decades. The argument that the only ay you can make money with a scientific result is a falacy. Intellectual property laws have never been stronger. Patent law has never been stronger and many prescidents have been set with regard to patenting of gene sequences. There really is no excuse for failing to disclose findings in this day and age.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
just to produce urine?
what, like there's a urine shortage?
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
...the fact that /. jumps on any nifty-sounding press release and presents it as science doesn't help.
We need a new category, "Unconfirmed Rumors," for these sorts of news reports.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
It's actually forbiden to use artificial hormones in cattle.
There is actually a row going on on the WTO between the US and the EC about this - the US want to export hormone fed beef to Europe, the EC says no.
It is possible that the company had made a simpler structure that could still produce urine, he said.
At least now we can reduce our dependency on foreign urine.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball(TM)
Back in the day, people believed in the 4 elements of earth, air, fire, and water. Why? Well, because somebody said so.
They believed that frogs came from mud, that life just arrived, that the sun went around the earth, and many other things.
Then the Scientific Method came along, and it was a simple idea:
1. Conduct an experiment with two groups, and only change 1 thing in each group.
2. Compare the results. If the majority of the groups with the different variable are truly different, you can possibly attribute that result to your variable.
3. Publish your results and show the world exactly what steps you took.
4. Other people recreate your experiment. If they get the same conclusions, then your theory may be correct.
5. If others find a different way to prove/disprove your theory, then eventually the Truth can be decided.
In the end, that's what science and the scientific method are all about. The search for the Truth. Is it the only method? Probably not - there are many truths in the universe we can't prove under the microscope.
But is it the best way that fallible humans can use to attain Truth? So far, yup. And as long as the real scientists don't forget that, we don't have to worry about "science by press release".
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
ACT is not the friendly non-profit down the street supported by charity and gov't grants and staffed with university-affiliated researchers. The charities don't have this money and the US gov't is trying to decide if it should tolerate or squash these folks and in the meantime is such a slow & conflicted funding mess they're not worth the bother. And academia - they've either lost many of their best and brightest to these shops or are desperately trying to form "partnerships" in order to keep in the loop and when it rains gravy to catch a few drops.*
Rather there's lots of hungry investors with deep pockets willing to invest and get these folks the best equipment and shield them from committees and reviews and university politics and such until they're ready to ship. All these folks have to do is get cracking and produce some encouraging results regularly which in ACTs case is what they are doing.
Were their previous results controversial? Yes - possibly overstated. Is this one - possibly again. They've grown *something*, possibly successfully, possibly not. Nobody knows exactly what yet but that's not ACTs point, theirs is that they've even gotten this far. When they find out if it works then they'll announce that too but they're just announcing all of their milestones as they go along.
So why are they doing this? PR. Not just the we-need-funds PR that so many folks are used to seeing (ACT seems fine that way) but also the Hey-the-21st-century-is-coming-at-you way so when ACT does have something to sell the market is ready to buy. Those nice comfortable theoretical debates are becoming much realer much faster then anyone imagined and it's in ACTs interest to have they and the market mature when a product is availiable.
Finally - why aren't the procedures and details being released? Because this is leading-edge privately funded research worth billions. If the public wants access to it then it can darn well pay for it. No money for uneasy biotech and too bizarre a regulatory climate and it'll happen anyway just without public participation and without sharing.
The Genie is out of the bottle kids. Either work with it to shape it to needs and values at its rate of growth or fail to keep up and lose all control.
-- Michael
* For the computer-centric folks this is the same as happened to CS departments in the 80's & 90's. All of the action moved out to industry along with the silly money. If you wanted in on the action you had to get off campus. Nobody has ethical concerns if Cisco announces a routing breakthrough unlike biotech announcing a grown organ but it's really the same business model applied to a different field.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
As bhudda would say, it is balance. Doing things in extreme is the problem. People really should clean a fish and slaughter an animal once in their life. The next time they think about wasting food, they'll remember a creature died for it. What I find disturbing about the meat industry is the sanitary appearance. People should be reminded creatures die for meat every time they go shopping. In other cultures, the idea of santinized meats is considered wrong and offensive.
The article is rather pessimistic, stating that it's unlikely for the scientist to have duplicated the complex design of a kidney, and that they might've generated something that would produce urine but wouldn't be practical.
I'm more optimistic. A kidney consists of nephrons arranged with one end attached to a capillary, able to access the blood stream, and the other to a duct eventually leading to the ureter. While it would be difficult, using current technology, to grow an exact replacement of a kidney, growing a sheet or row of nephrons would be much simpler and would still be effective.
Assuming this announcement isn't a complete hoax, I believe we're closer to culturing kidneys than the article indicates.
Colleagues have already succeeded in cloning cells, causing them to differentiate into cartilege, and then, using an ear shaped scaffold, making an artificial ear; but only an artificial outer ear! It is basically a plastic surgery technique, the inner ear is too complicated to be made by this method.
coaxed the stem cells into becoming kidney cells, and then "grew" them on a kidney-shaped scaffold.
What he is saying is that he made a kidney-shaped lump of meat out of kidney cells. This is NOT the same as a kidney, even if it squirts out "urine".
Some of these kidney cells have a directional orientation which you cannot duplicate with a scaffold - without getting too technical, these cells are adjacent to two tubes, one tube which carries proto-urine and one tube which carries blood. The cell has to know which is which.
Even if the cells don't know which is which, and if the tubes are there, they might still produce something that looks kinda like urine, just because they allowed the contents of the artificial proto-urine tube to become isotonic (equal in content of water and salt) with the blood. I will say - if what these kidneys made was "good" urine, the people at Advanced Cell Technology would release it's contents in a second. There is no way that anyone could steal whatever trade secrets they have based on the quality of the urine their artificial kidneys produce.
Kudos again to the New Scientist for raising these concerns.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
According to The Washington Post coverage:
8 26 4-2002Jan29.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/articles/A5
They aren't disclosing exact methodology because they believe it will hurt their chances of journal publication- which, although it may not be the entire truth, is in fact a valid reason. Also, the Post article contains quite a bit more detail than the one from The New Scientist; it's worth checking out.
(And dammit, Slashcode keeps putting a space in the URL, I don't know why, it shouldn't be there)
Thermowax
Its about goddam time, My sone , who is now 5 had a liver transplant at 9 months old. He had a disease called billiary atresia. There is no singular known cause, and no treatment except liver transplant, which does resolve the problem, as it is confined to the liver.
.....THERE IS NO MONEY IN IT FOR THE DRUG COMPAINES !, THE SAME WENT FOR ALTERNATIVE TX OPTIONS. This is horeshit.
We HAD a Living related donor TX for genetic matching reasons amongst others, my wife was actually genetically closer, so they whacked the left latteral lobe from her.
He has suffered NO rejection to date (98% of ALL liver TX have rejection to some degree in the first 14 days) he didnt even have that. NOW Liver rejection is much different from kidney or heart rejection, hyper-acute rejection (all of a sudden really bad) rarley happens then only early post TX. Livers can be in rejection for months and the patient not even know. Damage will be done if it isnt caught, but Liver regection is nearly ALWAYS controllable from and anti rejection standpoint.
NOW, wehn he was diagnosed I asked WHY in gods name wasnt there a cure, the answer very simple, from the then Head of UNOS (all organs are allocated from here) and the #2 ranked transplan surgeon in the world
The DRUGS to sustain liver TX arent cheap, kidneys and hearts are multitudes worse and the only ones worth a crap are pateneted. old crap like cyclosporin is fine if every 3 years you want to have your gums cut back (it makes em grow) and dont mind having ONE HUGE eyebrow(no shit) The pharm companies arent going to like this at all, I can see them lobbying hard against this forno other reason to save their profit centers.
Things happen , my sons chances and survival rate is exellent this far out from TX with no roblems (liver related) but if there is ever an injury he is much more succepible to liver necrosis, because he was given a liver half from a living person they could only take 1/2 the blood vessels, if he EVER has to be Re-TX I hope he could have his own genes in it and rejection would be a non issuse
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
Last thing I heard from developmental biology/biochemistry, they hadn't yet euclidated all of the sub-steps involving thousands of hormones/enzymes/genetic control mechanisms required to turn a tissue into an organ. Sure, we can take some stem cells, hit them with some chemicals and have them start to make kidney cells or neurons or endothelial cells. Convincing these kidney cells to form an organ, however, is a HUGE leap which requires stem cells becoming vascular tissue ( +3 types of cells) and protective sheathing ( +2 types of cells) and accessory nervous/vacular connections ( +2 types of cells). Has anyone made these types of cells? Not that I know about.
Good news is - this type of human-controlled development is possible in C. elegans, a worm. We have sequenced it's entire genome http://www.sanger.ac.uk/Projects/C_elegans/ and more importantly, we know where every single cell in the adult originated from - starting with a 4-cell zygote. PubMed Abstract Link
Maybe in 20 or more years we will have this knowledge for some "higher" animal - Maybe even a vertebrate! Then we can start to understand human organ development.
"One touch of Darwin makes the whole world kin." George Bernard Shaw
I have a fairly interesting insight into this.
You are correct, from the standpoint of financials you are somewhat correct.
What you do not realize is pharm. companies are not trying to find cures for hadly anthing, intentionally, other than to release long term treatments based on those findings. My uncle , whom I spent summers with from the time I was 7-17, was/is a major player in drug delivery systems, he holds over 200 patents. He INVENTED, and DEVELOPED the transdermal delivery system you see in "patches" while at Ciba Geigy, first known as transderm nitro, then the motion patch transderm scopolomine. Long and short he retired, that lasted all of about 5 minutes, before he was hired by a company out west , where he wintered in his retirment. He now does nothing but push drugs and systems through FDA approval, funny he wont take anything but asprin , he knows , and is partly responsible for pushing this crap through.
Pharm. companies would MUCH rather have a LONG term treatment regimin than a cure, they do actually specifically gear their programs to thoses ends. There are exceptions, but fewer and fewer. Cancer treatments have advance little in the last 20 years, the techiniques yes, the actual treatments no. There is as reason , chemo is EXPENSIVE, a drug company would much rather string you along 2 years even if you die in the end , than cure you with one fell swoop. More and more research monies are going into private efforts to goals on intentionally prolonging these ends.
My son also had cancer, neuroblastoma, I am aware all to closley with these problems.
I have a genetic blood disorder, it requires being bled monthly. The FDA last year APPROVED donor blood of my type for blood recipient use, it is not harmfull in the least and actually carries almost double the hemoglobin. NOW that said the Red Cross STILL requires, and has no intention of CHARGING for "theraputic" blood draws. Why , it is a profit center , lets see, 50k-100k people in the US with my problem currently seeking treatment. 1 x a month 12 month in a year 30 bucks a crack,thats 18 to 36 million a year. Now there is a wayy around it find a doctor that will lie and say you have surgery upcoming and need to self donate. This is dumb as hell and a pain.
What I see as the problem isnt a misdirection of resources to a rare disease. That I can understand and accept. THE PROBLEM IS GREED , AT THE COST OF THE QUALITY OF HUMAN LIVES FOR PROFIT. Intentionally witholding of research and findings that IS happening, because, there is more money in treatment. The pharm companies are PAYING LOBBYISTS to STOP certain genetic research, under many different arenas cloning, stem cell research etc. Many of these companies financials are open to an extent. Really funny thing is I almost , took a job at a company that they lobby through. That wasnt why I didnt take the job, funnily enough the GOP and MS actually use their services too to set up , wanna know what their business is......this is a doosey and legal too. They set up fake "grass-roots" lobbying efforts and PAY high buck lobbyists to work setting up unsuspecting citizens to become and Autonomous grass roots campaign, the "Leaders" of these campaigns are even unaware where the money came , and what the actual purpose of it is. (YOU WOULD BE FUCKING AMAZED at what they have pulled off)
Greed, Greed, Greed, capitalism has become synonymous with it , horsehit, greed stands on its own. Companies can make a profit and a nice one without greed, the problems have become companies wield more power in this country that individuals. and as such get away with shit , that if tried by any one single person, would be thrown in jail and wiped over the front page of the local rag so fast it would make your head spin.
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
However, look at the situation:
Tens of thousands of researchers (yes, including federally funded ones) have been working on cancer treatment, in an effort that has gone on longer than anyone here has been alive. This could be because:
a. Evil capitalist greed is preventing the publication of the many potential cures that are right around the corner.
b. Curing cancer is a really hard problem.
I understand why you're angry enough to guess "a", but I don't think you're right.