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Advance In Making Stem Cells From Skin
KillerBob writes with an advance on the news from a year back that stem cells can be produced from human skin — discussed here. Now Canadian researchers have found a safe way to generate stem cells without using viruses to modify the genome, a process that can have its own dangers. "The ethical debate over embryonic stem cell use may soon be moot, thanks to a Canadian team of researchers who, together with a team out of Scotland, has found a safe way to grow stem cells from a patient's own skin. The revolutionary finding, described in a paper published yesterday by the international science journal Nature, means doctors may be one step closer to treating a multitude of diseases, including Alzheimer's, diabetes and Parkinson's."
Advance In Making Stem Cells From Skin
Don't get me wrong, I understand why this is cool. But I'd still much rather hear that there'd been a breakthrough in making skin from stem cells.
A-Bomb
We must move to ban all exfoliating soaps! Murder!!
MABASPLOOM!
We see these stories about eight times a year. "New alternative to embryonic stem cells just around the corner". It's never clear how far around the corner it really is, though.
In any case, I'm certain that sooner or later some brilliant soul will crack this code. I can't help but wonder, though: how much scientific effort has been displaced into "finding other ways to make stem cells" that could otherwise have gone into "finding ways to use stem cells to treat medical conditions".
They haven't shown that the cells can actually differentiate into any cell type. They have just shown that they express the biological markers that make it look like a pluipotent stem cell. Meaning that expresses a few surface markers that they tested. That dosen't mean that it can turn into any type of stem cell. I wouldn't hold my breathe.
/bring me another beer!
Killing babies still has a much better chance of growing me a new liver.
Wouldn't it be so much cooler if the headline had read "Advance In Making Killer Stem Cells From Skin?"
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Make stem cells the way nature intended: from aborted fetuses.
Quit wimping around.
Trolling is a art,
I'm holding out for stem cells from Dupes.
Any way to access the article without paying through the nose?
The universities in the study in question are both public universities. This is government science funding at work; its a shame it isn't US government science funding.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The question of whether these cells can be re-differentiated without using a virus to reprogram the cells is an important question yet to be answered from this research.
There is another important question to be addressed with this technique, however.
The article mentions cancer as a side effect for virus-engineered stem cells and immune rejection for stem cells from other people.
Would this technique manage to create stem cell-derived new cells without their own set of side effects?
Cancer is assumed as a side effect of the virus-engineered stem cells only. Since any tissue being made from converted stem cells is put through accelerated growth, what safeguards are there against tumor growth (cancerous or non-cancerous) with this new technique?
I ask this since I read another article noted tumor growth at stem-cell graft sites is common. That article didn't note whether these cases were from virus-engineered stem cells or not.
clicky!
My pics.
Disclaimer - I work with these guys on occasion.
I am an hESC biologist, and this stuff is quite significant. I expect iPS cells will take over from hESC in the near to mid-term future (5-10 years). Not that I have any problems with hESC, but as a professional in the field, if they can do the same things and not bother people as much, why not? It's worth noting though that this would never have happened without research on embryonic stem cells to allow us to identify the culture conditions etc necessary to maintain puripotence. This lab is not-coincidentally also one of the few Canadian labs licensed to make new hESC lines from discarded blastocysts. Also worth noting that iPS lines will eliminate some of the ethical issues around hESC - but definitely not all of them. This will be particularly important in the U.S. IIRC - Canadian law on hESC is defined around pluripotence (e.g. it includes human iPSC), whereas I don't think this is the case south of the border.
In a timely juxtaposition, the other primary front-page story in today's Globe and Mail was about cutbacks to Canadian research funding. While you guys get Obama and an extra $10bn to the NIH, we are stuck with a conservative government and losing hundreds of millions from our research councils. Our Minister of Science and Technology (a chiropractor FFS) apparently screamed at representatives of the national organization of University professors and stomped out of the room when asked about it.
For those Canadians reading this: Canadian scientists are among the best in the world. We can compete on this and many other playing fields - but we need stable, non-politicized funding, most particularly for basic research like this. Industry will not do this kind of work, the profits are too far down the road. Our government needs to stop playing silly power games, and pay attention to the task at hand, before we lose a lot of these top players to the U.S.
Please write (snail-mail as always is both free and most effective) your MP and encourage them to support scientific research in Canada. If nothing else, when the bailout money runs out and the carmakers finally go belly up, this is where the next generation of jobs will come from.
Is ethics the business of identifying rules regarding what we'd feel bad for having done, so that we can avoid guilty feelings?
I can kind of understand theists' reasons for striving to act in a moral/ethical way, but I've never gotten a clear explanation of why non-theists would put energy into ethics (medical ethics, in this case).
I collected stem cells from the stalk of a dandelion last summer. It's no big deal.
I find it funny when people go on about stem cell research and how it's always promised it will be around the corner, 10 years away. Stem cell research only had enough potential for the public to get excited about about 10 years ago, and now, about 10 years latter their has already been amazing successes using stem cell treatments, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. it's makeing steady progress, and it's the most amazing medical advancement since the concept of organ transplants started looking like it might be possible.
So are you the sack or the shit?
Another amazing medical breakthrough just around the corner... One can't help but become a little sceptical about the motives behind those who always seem to promise much yet not deliver? More often than not it feels like a stab at some good PR for a company who has had bad press recently... The work these guys do is truly amazing but I do feel that where the money is coming from is usually a less than desirable source who would only be interested in charging an arm and a leg for a new heart or a brain... Call me an antitrust conspiracy theorist.....
To which I say "Horseshit!" The day that American medicine finds a cure for cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes and Parkinson's is the day that American medicine goes out of business. Doctors, HMOs, big pharma and hospitals are too busy making money off the sick to fix these problems.
We've been paying for a war on cancer for over 50 years and don't have a cure; surgery remains butchery; antibiotics are losing their effectiveness; no significant inroads against viruses have been made. The American medical establishment needs a radical dollar-ectomy in the form of
"One step closer" doesn't mean anything when you're miles from home.
Really? I guess they're putting "a safe way to grow stem cells from a patient's own skin" in the bottom of a box of donuts now...
What's the REAL skinny on this?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Even though some people keep painting embryonic stem cells as the holy grail of stem cell research, this is quite frankly rubbish. Unless they are your own cells you face the same rejection and immune defence problems with embryonic stem cells as you would with any donated organ.
Until we figure out human cloning (which is another ethical issue), embryonic stem cells are only interesting in that they are an easy source of stem cells for study. The most obvious path at present for actually using stem cells in treatment is harvesting them from the patient.
Regardless of embryonic stem cells worked better in the short term, in the long term we would need to deal with their side effects. Being on immune suppressants for the rest of your life is not fun.
========
CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
I recently saw a talk by Rudolf Jaenisch, who is one of the pioneers in this field. He stressed that while there is great hope for iPS cells, they underscore the need for more work done with actual embryonic lines. The first iPS cells made in 2006 couldn't do the same things as the newer lines that are made today, and the lines that are made today can't do all the things that some embryonic lines can do. We need to do much more research to characterize the embryonic lines to understand what makes them special and able to do the things that they can do so that we'll be able to make iPS with the same properties and therapeutic possibilities. So sure, in the future, we may be doing all our treatment with iPS cells, we still have a long way to go with quality embryonic lines before we can get to that point.
I bet they'll have this perfected in 2 years. Good thing Obama went all liberal early and decided to speak out totally pro-embryonic stem cell research. It's not like he didn't know this sort of thing was being developed for the last few years. So what's the big problem here? He burnt up so many political points saying "yay, let's chop up human babies!" and all the conservatives modded him down as flamebait lol. He could have just remained on the fence or refused to comment about the issue until it was no longer and issue instead of forcing himself to appear even more liberal to all of America.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
This is the more important question. But somehow, doctors, the phamaceutic industy, and "health" insurance companies do not care at all about it.
The only thing I ever hear is "We found out how to fix this, and that.". Never "We found out how you can prevent yourself from ever getting this."
As long as the medical "science" does not concentrate on prevention, they're still stuck in the middle-ages.
For example all the so-called "diseases of old-age" can be back-traced to eating bad food for decades, toxins/dangers in the environment, not processed psychological traumata, and bad genetic mutations (in contrast to good ones).
Simply because this are the only causes there are.
The problem is, that most of the symptoms start a decade after the original problem started. And the other problem is, that all that industry lives on people being sick instead of being healthy. But we already know that.
In the end, when it comes to really fixing your problem, you always are on your own. Find the real cause, and remove it from your life. Bad food is 90% of that. As proven by Dr. med. M.O. Bruker in decades of treating thousands of patients. I don't know if there is a non-German version of his book(s) though. :/
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Some bunch of dogooder, god squad, save the planet loonies will find a away to ban skin or parts thereof. We should be way more advanced with embryonic stem cells.
The supposed ethical issues with embryonic stem cells were a red herring. What the loonies really want is no stem cell work at all to take place. So now the self appointed guardians of morals and ethics must put on their pointy hats and try to find a way to declare skin cell derived stem cells immoral.
How moral or ethical is it for these ignorant idiots to have opinions in the first place?
...that the bulk of the comments here are some sort of ridicule for the Christian Right, instead of plaudits for the idea of an advancement that makes the 'farming' of stem cells morally neutral.
Are we really so shallow that rather than confronting someone else's (and it's not a trivial % of the populace) genuine moral questions in sympathy, that we simply mock them? Don't bother replying, we all know the answer.
I don't necessarily agree with the concept that every zygote is sacred; nevertheless I can well see the difficulty of harvesting something from those zygotes for the people who do. (More accurately stated, their fear that there will be a sudden discovery of 'value' in these zygotes, inspiring the full range morality-free behaviors which typically characterize humans when confronted by something of value.) What's more ironic is that the unbelievable, staggering values that's been postulated for embryonic stem cells remains apparently that after all these years: apparently the entire world outside the US is furiously researching uses for these cells, as well as any US lab capable of operating free of the US gov't largesse, but nobody's managed to come up with a real-world useful therapy yet? Curious.
To get back to the point, I feel however that Christians' furor over stem cells would be more accurately directed at the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of fertilized eggs 'disposed of' in the artificial insemination process every year...but that cat is well out of its particular bag, culturally speaking.
I find it equally ironic that some of people that rail against the 'naive' Christians for their 'ridiculous' discomfort at harvesting a resource from zygotes, are some of the same people who express outrage at the ripping of inorganic resources from a not-potentially-a-person ground. I guess it just depends where a person sees value.
-Styopa
It turns out they didn't use viruses, but instead transposons to get their genetic code in a cell. The catch is that transposons (aka jumping genes) are mutagenic. They did use a certain enzyme in mouse cells to remove them, but it's still possible they caused damage to the DNA. If it can be safely removed, that's great, but I'd be a little nervous about this approach.
It may be possible to achieve the same approach using raw strands of RNA that never modifies the DNA, but I'm sure smarter people than me may know reasons why that's difficult.
maybe now we can stop killing babies
I'm surprised no one wondered yet, are they doing this with "dead skin cells" that flake off, or do they need living tissue? I find it hard to believe that can use viruses to mutate dead cells, and though it's not as bad as the pound of flesh Shylock demanded, I wonder how much flesh they need. If you remember from an episode of House, where Cameron takes a scalpel and slices off a chunk of skin from the old patient, causing it to bleed. That's the image I got when I read this.
don't worry, when the US is in a pre-WWII Germany state with a crushing load of debt, we'll actually have a stable government. Well, they're fucking there already, but close enough.
that the egg produced, than merely an abstract cure, which *might* come about in the future.
Barack Obama was a prime candidate for abortion: his single mother didn't have the means to raise him. Think about where we would be today if his mother had aborted him.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Still, this is just a minor advance. We're still a long way off from doing anything truly interesting yet.
Wake me up when we can make gametes from these stem cells.
I'm a leaf on the wind, watch how I soar...
-Lucy-
I did not see the term embryonic in the article, and since these are derived from adult cells I wouldn't expect to. Embryonic cells are generally easier to replicate and more capable, while adult (somatic) cells have the benefit of not causing rejection. More on the differences at the NIH stem cell info page.
A means to create embryonic stem cells from adult cells would provide pluripotent cells of matching genetic makeup, which seems to be the ultimate starting point for stem cell therapy. The fact that a virus is not used to create these cells seems to reduce the chances of genetic errors or increased cancer cancer risk, a benefit of embryonic stem cells.