Human Based Stem Cell Culture Medium Developed

ubersonic writes "A new culture medium for growing human stem cells -- that contains no animal products -- is offering researchers a cleaner and therefore safer environment for performing the cutting-edge technology. The discovery means that stem cells developed for therapeutic use can be transferred directly to human subjects. By using this medium all of the concerns about contaminating proteins in existing stem cell lines can essentially be removed."

Comments

Interesting Discovery

[IntelliAdmin]

This is a very interesting discovery. Could this totally remove the argument about stem cell research? Since it sounds like they are able to produce Stem Cells without using other human tissue to do it.

Re:Interesting Discovery

[Loc_Dawg]

I don't believe that it will totally remove any arguments about stem cell research. We don't currently need human "tissues", just human "cells".

Re:Interesting Discovery

[TubeSteak]

Could this totally remove the argument about stem cell research?

Nothing can remove the argument about stem cell research.

The measures taken by Pres. Bush only placate some of the critics.

There will always be a group of hardliners who think any stem cell research is bad, in the same way that some people think any abortions are bad, irrelevant of the circumstances.

For some people, the issue is about where the stem cells came from, for others, the issue is about what can be done with the stem cells.

Re:Interesting Discovery

[heatdeath]

No, they're able to produce Stem Cells without using animal proteins, which means that they don't have to remove the contaminating proteins after it's cultured. This doesn't change anything wrt the debate about if it's right - which is primarily over the fact that the most useful stem cells still come from aborted fetuses, which nearly all anti-abortion advocates think is immoral.

Re:Interesting Discovery

[Tallweirdo]

This doesn't change anything wrt the debate about if it's right - which is primarily over the fact that the most useful stem cells still come from aborted fetuses, which nearly all anti-abortion advocates think is immoral.

It is my understanding that research stem cells do not come from aborted fetuses but instead from fetuses or fertilised eggs created for IVF (In-Vitro Fertilisation) but not implanted. This is an important distinction as surplus IVF fetuses are eventually destroyed (incinerated as biological waste) after the mother successfully gives birth.

Stem cell research is performed using fetuses that would have been destroyed anyway. Can anybody argue that using them for research is morally any worse than simply destroying them?

Re:Interesting Discovery

[asliarun]

One question: Do the scientists have a moral obligation to get the parents' approval before they commence their experiments? Agreed, the extra fetuses or eggs would have been incinerated anyway. Nonetheless, a parent might still feel icky if they learnt that their fetuses are being used for experiments. In any case, the parents are paying the clinic to help them get a baby, NOT to aid stem cell research.

Disclaimer: I'm definitely not one of those anti stem-cell fanatics. That should not preclude us from raising moral or ethical issues about how these experiements are conducted, however. In any case, most doctors/researchers have such an inflated ego or god complex that they would not even think twice before trampling an individual's basic human values.

[rant] To digress wildly, why are doctors the only breed that give you an appointment after a week and *then* make you wait for 2 hours in the waiting room. Would you take the same shit if it was your carpenter or lawyer? Someone should sue their egotistical asses, i tell you.[/rant]

Re:Interesting Discovery

[RodgerDodger]

Re: Rant. Because a good doctor actually takes time to sit down with their patients and diagnose the issue. If a particular appointment takes an hour instead of the 15 minutes scheduled, then it takes an hour. Doctors schedule their days around average appointment durations, but this invariably means that there will be overruns that will cause delays. These delays get absorbed by the appointments that run short, or by the various buffer periods that doctors schedule in.

On those (rare!) occasions when the buffer period isn't used in catchup, the doctors fit in other work.

Running late is actually a sign of a good doctor - if there's never a delay, the doctors are working to the clock, not the patient.

Happy?

Re:Interesting Discovery

[hunterx11]

There are always hardliners, but as time passes they become less and less relevant. There are still plenty of people against IVF, but it's pretty accepted. There's almost no one against organ transplantation. And you'd be seriously hard-pressed to find someone against using analgesic drugs during birth for moral reasons. Stem cell research will almost certainly become uncontroversial during the lifetimes of young people today, or at least much sooner than human cloning.

Re:Interesting Discovery

[TubeSteak]

And you'd be seriously hard-pressed to find someone against using analgesic drugs during birth for moral reasons.

Not to seem like I'm making fun of your point, but Scientologists seem to have some moral objection to painkillers during birth.

I don't think stem cell research will become uncontroversial, but I do agree that the people who're objecting will eventually become marginalized in the debate.

Stem cell research will progress whether they like it or not, both domestically (in some cases, without federal funds) and overseas, where they have very few restrictions.

Re:Interesting Discovery

[QuantumG]

I agree. Even once we can go and get a replacement heart grown from our own stem cells there will be people picketting the hospital saying we're evil for having our defective heart transplanted. Just like there are people now who consider blood transfusions to be evil even if it's your own blood you have banked that you are transplanting.

Re:Interesting Discovery

[lysergic.acid]

Well, the problem still remains since the main issue most pro-lifers have with abortion is that you are in fact destroying something that has the potential to become a human being. Most individuals who are against abortion do not make distinctions between a fertilized egg, an embryo, a fetus, and a human being. That's why many pro-life pharmacists often refuse to fill morning after pill prescriptions which are meant to prevent a pregnancy by causing any possible fertilization to be aborted before implantation into the womb. Pro-lifers consider this act an abortion even though a woman's body often does this naturally without the woman's knowledge in what's called a spontaneous abortion--this is why the medical community does not consider fertilization to be the beginning of the pregnancy, but rather when the fertilized egg is actually implanted.

So yea, if you look at the situation from a medical perspective, there are no obvious ethical dilemmas. But those against stem cell research are looking at issue in a religiously framed context using different definitions of terms and medically/scientifically unsupported premises.

Re:Interesting Discovery

[Dcnjoe60]

This doesn't change anything wrt the debate about if it's right - which is primarily over the fact that the most useful stem cells still come from aborted fetuses, which nearly all anti-abortion advocates think is immoral.

While non-embryonic stem cells can come from aborted fetuses, most actually come from bone marrow, fat cells, nasal and cheek linings, umbilical cords, etc. Stem cells from these sources are not controversial and have been successfully used to treat parkinsons, diabietes, leukemia, spinal injuries and some 61 other diseases. All of which is well documented, but usually not reported. It is only the use of embryonic stem cells derived from cloning a human embryo (nuclear transfer) that are controversial.

To date, the only thing that embryonic stem cells have produced are cancer tumors. Evidently, they are so undifferentiated that they cause uncontrolled cell growth (tumors). The push for having government funding of embryonic stem cells is because businesses and private individuals won't fund it. They are pouring millions into non-embryonic stem cell research, which has been proven to be successful time and time again.

Regardless, the "discovery" reported doesn't impact the moral or ethical discussion, it comes into play after the intitial stem cells are taken (or created, in the case of embryonic ones).

Contamination

[nativequeue]

It has been shown that an animal based culture medium will contaminate the stem cell line.
Might this still happen in the long run, just contaminated with human molecules, as they mix with the growth medium?

Re:Contamination

[Belseth]

The problem was rejection and posible bad reactions to being exposed to the animal proteins. The human proteins aren't likely to cause the same rejection issues. The real problem now is Bush is demanding that they stick with the small number of existing lines, most of which are already contaminated. They can still experiment in this country but they can't recieve government funds if they use new lines because it upsets the radical base. I think there will be a lot of opposition to treatments being approved because of the same ignorant stance. They are terrified some of the hundreds of thousands of unused embryos might be used to treat the sick. It's about control and they don't care if the donors approve or not. It's a religious issue like many facing the government today. So long as the current administration is in power religion will always trump common sense.

Ummmm...

[TubeSteak]

Should we really be trusting a story from RedHerring.com?

Re:Ummmm...

[msouth]

Heh. You're on slashdot disparaging another site's credibility.

Real Contri

[dartarrow]

FTA: "The scientists hope their findings will help reopen the debate over federal funding of stem cell research in the United States."

the real contribution any stem cell research/findings should at this point be :
1. clearing up its name, after the incident from *that* korean scientist
2. reducing if not totally eliminating legal limitations based on ethical issues.

do these things and you're good to go.

Re:Real Contri

[Stripe7]

None of the stem cells from these clean lines can be used in any Federal funded stem cell research. Bush made certain of that.

Stem-cell green

[penguinoid]

"We describe the derivation of two new human embryonic stem cell lines in... culture that includes protein components solely derived from recombinant sources or purified from human material," reads the paper.

Stem-cell green is people!

Finally!

[pcgabe]

By using this medium all of the concerns about contaminating proteins in existing stem cell lines can essentially be removed.

And thank God! Now that the major concern regarding stem cell research has been cleared up, we can get on with this vital, life-saving work.

That =was= what all the controversy about stem cell research was, right? Contaminating proteins?

In other news...

[heatdeath]

Chinese scientists have made amazing advances in enabling multiple births, for those Chinese people who want to have twins. Iranian scientists have also genetically modified a pig so that it will reproduce and grow at 5 times the normal rate. Iran's hunger problems will surely end soon.

Re:In other news...

[hunterx11]

Allow me to describe the situation here in pictorial terms:

. * < - joke
.
. O < - your head
. -|-
. / \

Further research planned

[LameJokeGuy]

American scientists expect further research to lead to breakthroughs in Large and Super-Sized stem cell cultures in the near future.

Re:Orthogonal issues

[mrbooze]

No, the argument that it "encourages" abortion is not strong at all, it's completely non-existent.

Does anyone out there really think that young women are sitting around thinking "Hey, if I get pregnant, I can go through annoying hormonal shifts, then have a painful and mildly risky invasive procedure, then they can use my aborted fetus to do medical resarch! Hooray!"?

People can reasonably have ethical objections to the concept of aborting a fetus for any reason, but it takes a special kind of brain damage to think stem cell research *encourages* women to have abortions.

Especially since one of the most commonly suggested sources of stem cells are excess fertilized eggs from fertility treatments that are going to be destroyed anyway.

who wrote this article?!

[dlupyan]

you *cannot* "contaminate proteins"! what contamination in the context of stem cells is that cells may become differentiated due to the way how they're cultured. the essence of a stem cell is that its undifferentiated cell and has a potential to transform to any cell type (muscle, brain, cardiac, liver, etc). With time these cells may loose this totipotency, or their ability to turn into any cell type. Contamination has nothing to do with culturing stem cells in heterologous medium!

Re:who wrote this article?!

[m50d]

The cells can be contaminated with animal proteins. If that happens it makes the tissues unsuitable for implanting into humans (because of rejection).

Is it so hard to RTFA?

[TubeSteak]

"All of the concerns about contaminating proteins in existing stem cell lines can essentially be removed using this medium,"

"We describe the derivation of two new human embryonic stem cell lines in... culture that includes protein components solely derived from recombinant sources or purified from human material,

"Derivation and culture in serum-free, animal-product-free, feeder-independent conditions mean that new human embryonic stem cell lines could be qualitatively different from the original lines

And one more quote for good measure:

The two new cell lines managed to survive without developing abnormalities for four and seven months.

I'm not sure how long you want "long-term" to be, but they must have chafed at having to hold back their paper for an extra 3 months.

Stem Cell Research and Ethics

[peterfa]

I appear to be alone in my opinion.

While I find it great that technology can find cures and whatnot, I find stem-cell research rather unethical. Stem-cell research is using the bodies of wouldbe humans. Now I say wouldbe but in reality these are full human beings. They are hardly developed however, but they have all the components to grow into babies, so they are completely human. Stem-cell research would be taking a body of another human being, and changing it's growth pattern to become part of someone else.

I know that this could allow people to walk, but I think that other methods must be found in instead of Stem-cell treatments.

This is essentially playing God in the worst sense. While many of us might not believe in God, certain, this violates the sanctity of life. Would you want to be used as a treatment into someones body, instead of growing into a human?

I know that many of these come from fertility treatment, and would be disposed of anyways. If this were to happen to you, do you find it would be ethical to turn you into a treatment rather then to returned into non-existance? Your state as a Stem-cell treatment would be nothing more than a few cells in somebodies back. This is a horrible existance. It would be better simply to not exist, because either way, you wouldn't be conscious, just in the latter you would be worse off.

In the least, Stem-cell research is pretty creepy if you ask me.

Re:Stem Cell Research and Ethics

[Firethorn]

Given the success of cloning, it could be argued that any cell culture could be reformed into a complete animal. We can't do that quite yet with humans, but we're pretty close.

Would you want to be used as a treatment into someones body, instead of growing into a human?

Wouldn't be me. Obviously you're a member of the soul on fertilization camp. Which would you rather be? Part of a cell culture that's saved the life of another human, allowed somebody to see, to walk, etc or to be incinerated with half a dozen others as 'medical waste' because you didn't happen to be the one implanted?

Besides, for actual treatment they're more likely to use cloned or artificial stem cells to prevent rejection by the immune system.

Somebody should probably mod this guy up. I don't agree with him, but he's a perfect example of the anti-stemcell viewpoint.

Re:Stem Cell Research and Ethics

[giorgiofr]

I disagree with almost everything you said but I won't flame you because you are being polite in your exposition. That said, I think there is a big flaw in your reasoning that I want to comment on.

Would you want to be used as a treatment into someones body, instead of growing into a human? [...] Do you find it would be ethical to turn you into a treatment rather then to returned into non-existance? [...] Your state as a Stem-cell treatment would be nothing more than a few cells in somebodies back. This is a horrible existance.

I am sorry but there is nothing "besides" or "outside" life/living. You're implying the existance of some sort of sentient being who would suffer under certain conditions and would like a different treatment: but such sentient being, by your very definitions of the circumstances (not being born at all), cannot exist. You're kinda condraticting yourself. So, to answer: *I* wouldn't find it funny to be turned into a treatment; but it's the real, living, *I* that speaks here. I wouldn't have any problem being turned into a treatment if I didn't exist yet, because there would be no *I* to speak of.
So unless you give evidence that somewhere some soul is crying, right now, because it doesn't want its body-to-be to be turned into a treatment, I will disagree with your opinions.
Besides, I think your opinions, my opinions, and everybody else's opinions have *no* relevance at all and that every scientist should do whatever he likes to do. Cloning babies and engineering planet-destroying death stars... whatever. Then again, I also think they should not be subsidized at all, no matter what they're resarching. This would make all these discussions quite useless.

Re:Stem Cell Research and Ethics

[Liam Slider]

Stem-cell research is using the bodies of wouldbe humans.

No, it's just using a tiny clump of human cells.

Your state as a Stem-cell treatment would be nothing more than a few cells in somebodies back. This is a horrible existance. It would be better simply to not exist, because either way, you wouldn't be conscious, just in the latter you would be worse off.

Better off to simply not exist? There's no person existing there, except the one who got the cells implanted into them to enable them to walk! An embryo may be life, may be human (just cells up until a point)...but it sure as hell isn't a person. Personhood doesn't come for a good long while. And stem cells (which themselves are not embryos) certainly have no personhood, and come even farther from it than embryos do.

Re:Stem Cell Research and Ethics

[fdiskne1]

I don't disagree with the basic idea of what you are saying. The problem is that you are confusing "stem cells" with "embryonic stem cells". Not all stem cells are embryonic stem cells. The stem cell lines that so far have provided the best results have been stem cell lines extracted from adults and umbilical cords and not aborted or non-implanted embryos. Most people who object to embryonic stem cell research have no problem with adult or umbilical cord stem cell research. Just be sure that when you put forward your argument against embryonic stem cells, you specify embryonic stem cells. Unless, of course, you disagree with ALL stem cell research. In which case, good luck!

Re:Stem Cell Research and Ethics

[eluusive]

I know that many of these come from fertility treatment, and would be disposed of anyways. If this were to happen to you, do you find it would be ethical to turn you into a treatment rather then to returned into non-existance? Your state as a Stem-cell treatment would be nothing more than a few cells in somebodies back. This is a horrible existance. It would be better simply to not exist, because either way, you wouldn't be conscious, just in the latter you would be worse off.

There's a little red heard on my driver's license that says "Organ Donor", what about yourself?

Re:Stem Cell Research and Ethics

[bhima]

I see in the hours between when I read this at lunch and my after work response many people have responded with surprising lucid criticisms of your imagined fears and misplaced objections. I can't help to add a few of my own.

You make a number of statements that are either very vague, mischaracterizations, impropbable, or philosophically faulty... either way they leave me with a lot of questions about how you arrived at your conclusions... actually let me restate that...
Your statements lead me to conclude that you find stem cell research morally wrong on a religious basis and rather than coming out and saying that you are casting about for some hidden horror which precludes any advantage responsible research could lead to.

Your statement "I find stem-cell research rather unethical" do you refer to all stem cell research or is it that you try to incorporate the ethical difficulties of abortion in to all forms of research of stem cells?

Your concept of "wouldbe humans" what do you mean by this? Do you mean, as someone else suggests, a fertilized egg or a more developed fetus and again trying to incorporate the ethical difficulties of abortion into the research of stem cells?

Your assertion that "wouldbe humans" "have all the components to grow into babies, so they are completely human" which components are those? Do you suggest that either a group of cells in a petri dish or an unborn fetus left on their own (without the intervention of an existing "complete human" .i.e. a mother or scientist and without any form of nurishment) eventually some how becomes a "complete human"?

Your statement "This is essentially playing God in the worst sense." and "this violates the sanctity of life" I take this to mean "Deciding which human lives and which one dies" or "Deciding what form a life, based on human cells, takes on". Is this what you meant? How is that different than the decision making of judges, lawyers, solders, &tc that has been going on since time in memorial? Can you say how a god would decide or that a god would never act through a stem cell researcher.

Your question if I were to be a fertilized egg would I find it "ethical to turn you into a treatment rather then to returned into non-existence". With what neurons would detect, recognize, and remember this event? Where is the identity that would object to such treatment? How did that identity become linked to those particular cells and not to other cells. Why wouldn't that same mechanism revise the link?

Your idea that "a few cells in somebodies back. This is a horrible existence". I must say that philosophically this is your most bizarre and problematic statement. The my cells in my back seem neither happy, sad, pampered, or tortured. They simply exist and in their existence contribute to my life liberty and happiness. How could they be anything else? Continuing with the example of spinal cord injury treatment... Once a stem cell treatment had been administered the cell differentiate to become nerve cells... Again I have to ask how cells lacking in mechanism to detect, recognize, and record the event retain this information and find misery in it. And after the short time these cells are actually living & active cells expires how and why would the specialized nerve cells carry this misery forward to future generations of cells.

"In the least, Stem-cell research is pretty creepy if you ask me." What I find creepy here are some of the bizarre ideas you bandy about as "reality"