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Stem Cell Lines Derived to Avoid Immune Rejection

Posted by Soulskill on from the making-miniscule-medical-marvels dept.

stemceller brings us a story about an experiment that was published online in the journal Cloning & Stem Cells. The paper demonstrated that embryonic stem cells can be used to develop therapeutic cells which will not provoke an immune response from a significant portion of the population. This comes alongside news that UC Irvine researchers have found a method of sorting stem cells that should be "quicker, easier and more cost-effective than current methods." The Cloning & Stem Cells publication states: "It is likely that treatment of large numbers of patients by cell therapy will only be possible if methods are found using any one cell line to treat very large numbers of patients. This very exciting paper represents a significant step forward towards the use of such cells in cell therapy."

3 of 41 comments (clear)

  1. Sperm's trick by PIPBoy3000 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They could also use the same sugar-based markers that sperm uses. This makes the cell universally ignored by the immune system. Of course, certain cancers use the same trick, so I'm not sure you want to put a bunch of them in your body.

    Personally I think I'd rather have my own personal cell line which matches my immune system exactly. The latest cloning news of adult cells shows it's quite likely in my lifetime.

  2. There are other paths by bradbury · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As pointed out by others, injecting embryonic stem cells into individuals is problematic due to the risks of teratoma. The process of development is a gradual process of differentiation into different cell types and most therapies work with partially differentiated stem cells. So one still has the problem of taking the stem cell lines and differentiating the cells into bone marrow (blood), nerve, liver, kidney, muscle, skin, etc. cells for specific applications.

    I have just filed a provisional patent application on a process for isolating self-pristine partially differentiated stem cells which I believe can be brought within the realm of affordability. I don't know about others but I would be much more comfortable, particularly at the neuron level, being treated with my own stem cells rather than someone elses even if they are HLA matched. The only good reason in my mind to use foreign stem cells is to correct severe biochemical defects if no gene therapies are available.

  3. The most important thing ... by snoggeramus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... to remember when it comes to stem cells is that all the medical successes to date are from adult stem cells (from bone marrow etc) and not embryonic sources. Despite the spin presented to the media and politicians, there have been NO medical breakthroughs with embyonic stem cells.

    Adult stem cells for treatment can be harvested in a timely manner from your own body and hence negate the issue of possible rejection. (And nobodys kid cops it, either!)