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Stem Cell Therapy Causes Tumors
SpaceAdmiral writes, "Using human embryonic stem cells, researchers have cured a Parkinson's-like disease in rats. Unfortunately, the Parkinson's cure causes brain tumors." From the first article: "...10 weeks into the trial, [University of Rochester researchers] discovered brain tumours had begun to grow in every animal treated... By definition, human embryonic stem cells have the almost mythical, immortal power to grow and divide indefinitely as they become the various tissues that make up the body. As a result, scientists have always known that any stem cell therapy could result in an uncontrolled growth of cells that could give rise to cancer."
Why not use adult stem cells? There also the cord blood research to add in, as well. So far, all the research I've been reading suggest these to be the best direction to take and such research is funded at the federal level. And as a bonus, has no real ethics baggage associated with it!
Does anybody else find it slightly disturbing that the "Related Links" section has a "Compare prices on biotech" link?
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What are you trying to sell me today,
Fill in your four or five-letter word of wisdom here _ _ _ _ _.
This is the same thing, in reverse. It's an interesting, frustrating animal result in a pretty good journal, not a crashing doom for stem cell research.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
...working with stem cells. There at two major practical problems. The first one is maintaining them -- you look at em wrong and the differentiate (BAM, no more stem cells, just some muscle, nerve, epidermal, etc. cells). The second is that BECAUSE they are so good at proliferating, they are prone to turn into tumors when introduced into the body. That isn't a new concern, it's just interesting that the research described here has actually observed that concurrently with alleviation of the targeted disease state (neurodegeneration in this case). I suspect the "fix" to this is already being developed, since the tissue they are destined to replaced in the brain is usually non-dividing tissue, it may be possible to engineer an 'off-switch' into the cells, whereby cell division could be permenantly disrupted (the tissue created by the stem cells would function as normal). This shouldn't be to hard, but does add to the effort already necessary to even generate patient-specific stem cells. More research!
This is a partial success. The therapy did what it was supposed to do - it cured the Parkinson's Disease. It's just that the side effects are worse than the disease at this point. But that's a whole lot better news than it not working at all.
Everybody with even a modest understanding of how scientific research goes knows that the road from interesting phenomena to practical application is usually a long and complex one, and that the claims of instant cures for everything from heart attack to spinal cord injuries were exaggerated for the purposes of winning political debate. But when a trial has a partial success, in my view that is further encouragement to continue research.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
...And biology research has been proven to cause disease and death in rats...
Seriously though... It doesn't necessarily follow that the cure (especially a cure that is still in its infancy - 'scuse the joke) is better than the disease, and the idea is to do the research now so that we can use the stem cells to cure terrible illnesses (and repair missing limbs and all the rest of it) without the side effect of the stem cells going out of control.
Of course medicine has side effects. Many of the drugs given to a person on chemo and radio therapy are to keep them alive while the actual cure goes ahead and kills their cancer. As yet we are still learning how to control the stem cells, and they are doing what cells do when uncontrolled: making more of themselves and living life to the full. We'll get better at controlling them if we research them. That's why it's called stem cell research...
The human body is an example of really crap evolutionary programming. Horrible spagetti code with no thought to make things modular. New stuff tacked in using old variables. Functions with multiple purposes.
So when you debug one thing, something else brakes.
God was a terrible programmer. But I guess that's what you get with a tight 7 day timeframe.
Scientific American had an article in june talking about stem cells and their role in some cancers.. specificly that some cancers are caused by stem cells in "normal" people going awry. From june SciAm: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000B1BE D-0C0A-1498-8C0A83414B7F0000&sc=I100322
Pretty interesting read, IMHO.
Vote Democrat... because the current Republican administration wants people to have Parkinson's disease.
Vote Republican... because Democrats want to give you cancer.
Vote Libertarian... because the government shouldn't be deciding for you if you want cancer or Parkinson's.
Where exactly did they obtain "human fetal midbrain tissues"?
Well now... IANASTR, but I'll go out on a limb and say "from the midbrains of human fetuses", with a pretty high level of confidence in my answer.
I cringe in disgust at how far this slippery slope is progressing...
What slippery slope? We have a significant portion of the population that deliberately aborts unwanted pregnancies. If someday we benefit from the use of their medical waste to cure Parkinson's or Alzheimer's or even just slow down plain ol' ageing - Good for me, good for you, good for everyone!
This doesn't require any sort of moral relativism to accept. It can provide nearly miraculous benefits for no (extra) cost. Sounds like a win/win, even if you take the FUD spewed by its worst opponents (tempered by a small dose of reality).
The fact that it causes tumors I consider an exceedingly inconvenient (if somewhat predictable) complication, but one we can hopefully overcome with continued research.
As an aside, I also fully encourage continued research into adult stem cells... Though not for any squeamish "oooh, no dead babies" line of BS. Nope - Simply for the far more pragmaic reason that tissue rejection doesn't present a problem after the cure itself takes effect.
Not every attempt at something new works the way you want the first time. The first heart transplant patient didn't live very long. The first medications for aids didn't work as well as what is out there now. That's why this kind of research is done on rats. *cough*eatshitpeta*cough* If medical research stopped the first time there was this kind of result, we'd all still be dying of yellow fever and polio. There are entirely too many people getting their shorts in a twist over this. Sheesh!
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
The ethical problem is that, if the raw material is "medical waste" and the results are successful, how long will it take before the demand out-strips the supply and people start looking for ways intentional generate the raw material? I'm already concerned about the outsourcing of pharmaceutical testing to thrid world countries - whether the test subjects are actually giving informed consent. Are we going to find out in ten or twenty years that these new wonder drugs are being produced by intentionally impregnating women and then harvesting their fetuses?
Before you respond that I'm being ridiculous, do a little research into the blood diamonds mined in Africa or children forced into the sex industry in southeast Asia. People will be "farmed" if there is a market for it, and it cna be hidden behind enough shell corporations that the big biotech firms have plausible deniability.
Maybe you should actually read science instead of press releases from the pro-embryonic stell cell lobby. They keep saying there is much promise, but the actual effective treatments have been based on adult stem cells. This may not always be the case, but it certainly is today
The only proven effective Type-1 diabetes cure, in mice was based on adult-stems cells -- just like what several other posters have been saying. This article refers to lab results where they reversed Type in mice, using ADULT not EMBRYONIC stems cells. This is not Christian pro-life lobby rantings.
You are right in saying it is not a Type I cure for humans (yet), but it is certainly promising.
BTW, No Type II cures based on stem cells have published to my knowledge.
In many ways, I could care less about adult vs. embryonic cell research in the U.S. (there are other countries you know). But as a U.S. Taxpayer, I would prefer not to have my tax dollars wasted on research that has to date proved useless when there is similar alternative that has been proved quite fruitful to date. Gov. Arnie bought the b.s. re: embryonic stem cells -- I would bet that California taxpayers see nothing useful coming out of it when the money is all spent.