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New Stem Cell Source - Your Bone Marrow
BoogieChile writes "ABC News is reporting that a team of researchers from Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles, lead by Dr John Yu, are aiming to extract renewable stem cells from bone marrow - extracted from the patient him/herself - for a source of neural stem cells for treatment of brain cancers, Alzheimers and other neurological disorders.
Problem solved! Yipee!
New spinal column, anyone?" 'Course the story has no details - post anything else you can find below.
There goes my business plan for foetal farming. I guess I'll have to abort the whole crop.
More info here
and
here
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
It doesn't focus much on the technology used, but the point that adults have stem cells within them, and scientist can now obtain them without going the politically icky embryo route.
.. from my cold, dead hands!
Trolling is a art,
At MIT Tech Review
Enjoy.
I understood that this had been known to be an option for some time now. The issue at hand as I understand it is that these cells are potentially not as useful as embryonic stem cells. I assume beacuse they have already differentiated to a certain degree.
Not to say that this research is not of value but I don't know that it's safe to say that it solves the whole embryonic stem cell issue.
Am I remembering incorrectly?
Unfortunately, the article goes into very little details such as:
Is extracting stem cells for bone marrow just as good as from fetuses? Can it be taken for a living patient? I have a big ethical problem with taking stem cells from an unborn baby, simply because a baby does not have the ability to consent to such a procedure.
I will be one of the first in line to donate bone marrow but will probably get rejected. Unfortunately, since I've lived in two countries no bloodbank will take my donation, even though I have no health problems. Hopefully, the law will be changed one day.
Well, this is a tricky question. Although the article doesn't mention this directly, I'm sure that it's one of the problems they're going to encounter. Fetal stem cells are what they call totipotential, in that they have the ability to become any type of specialized cell in the body given the appropriate "signals." Stem cells in the adult bone marrow are slightly less capable of this, usually being called pluripotential. While they can differentiate into a wide number of cells, they are relatively committed to becoming some type of formed element in the blood or bone marrow. The challenge at this point will be attempting to coax the marrow stem cells into taking a neural development route, something they hadn't originally planned on doing.
-The Doc
Essentially, the embryonic stem cells have failed to produce very promising results because of rejection or tumor formation (in many cases). Adult stem cells, which are pluripotential (not totipotential), have no rejection problems because they are autologously donated. Searching Google on "bone marrow stem cells" produces a variety of results, like this plea for funding from a Russian biologist: Why cloning? or this from Science Daily or Bone Marrow Stem Cells can become almost anything.
Cedars-Sinai is pretty involved in stem cell research on a variety of levels. Do a search for stem cells on their site and you'll come up with tons of stuff.
They offer Stem Cell/Bone Marrow Transplantation as a part of their other transplantation services. Here is their FAQ about the process. http://www.csmc.edu/bloodmarrow/859.asp
Not exactly what the article is talking about though.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
Fetal umbillical cord blood is rich in stem cells. If you're having a child it's worth looking into( Cord Blood Registry is a good source of information). One interesting thing to note is that stem cells harvested from cord blood can not only be used in the baby that produced them, but sometimes can be used in parents and siblings as well. This may be the case with other stem cells too, but I'm not sure.
You are correct, and this is currently being used to treat a variety of patients with "bone marrow failure" from illnesses not necessarily limited to leukemias. The big jump here is that they're hoping they can trick the bone marrow stem cells into thinking they can become neural cells, something not in the original game plan. Of course even if that is possible, whether or not we can actually harness this power to treat disease is left to be discovered. Given the possibilities, however, it's something I'd keep my fingers crossed on.
-The Doc
There is already a replacement to the embryonic stem cells: stem cells from the blood in Umbilical (Sp?) cords. If the goverment or a group of hospitals came together and saved the blood from the umbilical cords of all babies born, there wouldn't be a need form embryonic stem cell research. There are a couple of companies already storing cord blood, one of them is cryo-cell
There was an article in the Mpls Star Tribune 2 weeks ago about the University of Minnesota licensing the rights to technology for creating stem cells from human bone marrow to a biotech firm called Athersys. The U of M researchers published a paper about this procedure in the July 4th issue of Nature. Here is a link to an article (not abstract) [nature.com].
The new spines are reserved for politicians that are unable to do the right thing when faced with large sums of cash.
This has been known for a LONG time. The problem is the cells are no where near as effective as fetal cells because of their inability to diferentiate as well (meaning they can't become as many 'body parts' and when they can, they are normally inferior because of the way in which stem cells in the body are retained during aging).
Also, other countries are already advancing with fetal stem cells. Take a look at annoucements from all over the world - countries that we're decades behind us are already passing us because of the religiously based rules imposed upon science by the 'Moral' politicians/lobbying groups. The cloning issues are progressing the same way. China and India are already advancing past us - and some of the most valuable scientists in the field are LEAVING the Unites States because of the limits that are being put on their research.
All I know is people are going to have abortions - be it medically or with a coat hanger - whether I, you, the president, god, etc., agree with it. They always have, they always will. We might as well use them towards some good. Unfortunately, some people feel it's better that we say "No, its bad. I won't listen." and let the already doomed fetuses be simply thrown away. At least, until their loved one dies and they realize they could have been saved with methods derived from stem cells.
The fact of the matter is this is the equivalent of saying "Well, we have diamons...but, take a look at this cubic zirconium...we shined it up real nice and it might be as good as a diamond." Except its NOT. Unfortunately, we're not allowed to make 'fake diamonds' (clone/in vitro fertilize) because that would be wrong too.
(And, apologies for spelling errors...I tried to look it over, but I know I must have made a few...maybe...)
What's moral and ethical in 'research' constantly evolves.
Back in university, I did a pretty thorough study and report on Frederick Banting and how he discovered insulin. I took a little field trip down to the University of Toronto and thumbed through some of his actual research logs.
Quick backstory:
He expirimented on dogs, basically trying to figure out what the (at the time unknown) internal secretion of the pancreas was, what it did, and how to extract it. His expiriments were to basically remove a big chunk of the pancreas, leaving only the cells that produce the digestive juices, and see what happened. The dogs got diabetic. He figured a way to extract the juice (insulin) from the pancreas, gave it to the now diabetic dogs, and they lived.
Anyhow. His logs are full of really shaky, obvious stuff. He was either an amazing scientist, or he was cooking the books. One test animal starts off as a cocker spaniel, and is later a german shepherd, for instance.
It's pretty much known that he and some assistants would scour the streets at night, abducting stray animals for their expiriments.
Now, back on topic. His behaviours were highly unethical in many ways by todays standards. I don't see any university letting you dognap animals to test out theories on them, let alone replacing a test animal because another died in surgery and not making any sort of note of that.
But, he discovered insulin. If we could go back and stop his unethical research, perhaps millions would still be dying of what is now a managable disease because of his work. Do the ends justify the means?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Ever had back problems fuck head? No? Go to hell. You have no idea what its like.
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This is exactly the problem. The stem cells at this point are already specialized, and they essentially know how old they are. Hence the reason to use fetal stem cells that have not been programmed as to their task.
I find it strange that this is something new. My friends who are working with stem cells have known about research of this type for some time, and know the inherent weaknesses in these methods.
'Course the story has no details - post anything else you can find below.
Translation: This sounds neat. It might be another hoax, but then we do have a reputation to keep up. I holpe the readers come through and make this an interesting article, cause right now, we got crap...