Embryonic Stem Cells Emit Healing Molecules

gim_alelen writes "The Associated Press (found here on Salon.com) is reporting that a new study finds that embryonic stem cells, even if they may not grow new limbs and organs may have other healing properties. The study reports that embryonic stem cells emitted molecules that reversed a lethal birth defect in mice."

Comments

more info

[v1x]

NewScientist has some more info on this.

Re:Adult Stemcells work just as fine

[EnronHaliburton2004]

http://www.stemcellresearch.org/

Look at you try and slip in that propogandist website. "Oh, hopefully nobody will notice if I sneak this in real quiet like".

At least have the decency to let people know that the site sponsors are against embryonic stem-cell research.

Re:Embryonic?

[VenTatsu]

Embryonic stem cells (along with other pieces) has the capability to grow into a new life.

"Do you have scientific proof of this? Or are you just repeating [insert political figure in the news] rhetoric?"

Last I heard you could not make a clone or a twin just by sticking an Embryonic stem cell in a womb.

Embryonic stem cell != Embryo

The research isn't being done on sticking a fetus in another person, so it's a bit untruthful to try to include that with a parenthetical comment.

Each time I see a vague article on embryonic stem cells I can't help but think it sounds a lot like 'free energy' (a.k.a. perpetual motion) announcements.

Re:Not that surprising

[reverseengineer]

It should be noted that the mice used in this experiment were knockouts for the Id1, Id2, and Id3 genes, which causes underproliferation of myocardial cells- the walls of the heart are too thin, and the mice generally die about 13.5 days into gestation (mentioned in the Science article, but not the Salon writeup). IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor-1) and WNT5a (wingless-type, a carryover from Drosophila studies) are both relatively small proteins that act as signaling molecules which act to spur cells to grow and proliferate. As the Science article notes, it would be interesting to know how much "rescue" of tissues comes from the stem cells themselves, and how much from the potent growth and proliferation factors they secrete. This is especially important in light of "the potential of ES cells to induce the formation of teratomas (fetal tissue tumors)." Which, by the way, are among the most awful things you could ever see.

Could IGF-1 and/or WNT5a be used in human therapies? Perhaps- after all they are already produced by healthy humans- and IGF-1 is already in use to treat some kinds of dwarfism- and by athletes, illegally, for its anabolic effects which are similar to growth hormone. IGF-1 does have the drawback of being structually similar to insulin (duh), so an overabundance can cause glucose intolerance, and since both are regulators of cell proliferation, both may increase the risks of certain cancers themselves.