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Advance In Making Stem Cells From Skin

Posted by kdawson on from the we-don't-need-no-steenkin'-viruses dept.

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."

22 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Wrong way around... by Bombula · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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    A-Bomb
    1. Re:Wrong way around... by drosboro · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That would be the general idea, yes. But, unless I'm missing something, there's no actual clinical treatment for doing that for skin yet. If I am reading correctly, the only "production-ready" stem cell treatments are involving cancer (specifically leukemia and other blood-related cancers) - there's been some success at replenishing bone marrow after a round of chemo knocks out all of the existing marrow.

    2. Re:Wrong way around... by PitaBred · · Score: 5, Informative

      You have to have the stem cells before you can move to using them for something. As they are, they're really expensive, rare, and possibly dangerous to make so they have to be screened very well. This new process makes experimentation and trials more likely. Gotta lay the foundation before you build the building.

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      My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
  2. Every Skincell is Sacred by neoform · · Score: 5, Funny

    We must move to ban all exfoliating soaps! Murder!!

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    MABASPLOOM!
  3. Just around the corner... by dachshund · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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".

    1. Re:Just around the corner... by DMUTPeregrine · · Score: 5, Informative

      Embryonic stem cells are not that useful for treatment, even though they are very useful for research. The advantage of stem cells is that they let you grow tissue that won't be rejected, since it's identical to that of the host. Embryonic stem cells aren't the same, and thus get rejected. Thus, adult stem cells are what we want for actual treatments. Embryonic cells are just easy to do research on, IE "finding ways to use stem cells to tread medical conditions." Once you know how to do it with the embryonic cells you can use the adult cells to actually implement the treatment.

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      Not a sentence!
    2. Re:Just around the corner... by thule · · Score: 4, Informative

      Alternatives to *embryonic* stem cells are in medical trials right now. It is called adult stem cells and something like 80 real-world trials are happening right now. One of the first uses of adult stem cells goes back a few years, it is known as "bone marrow transplant."

      I don't think I have heard of a single clinical trial using embryonic stem cells. That is why embryonic stem cells need government subsidies. The real money is in treatments that have hope of working.

    3. Re:Just around the corner... by neokushan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Just because something is controversial doesn't mean it's useless. I think you'll find that Science in general has a habit of being controversial (e.g. "Big Bang vs. God"), but that doesn't make the findings any less valuable or useful. Who knows what this research might lead into, it might be something really cool, it might be nothing, but there's a good chance that in future, OTHER research will be based upon it.

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    4. Re:Just around the corner... by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Embryonic stem cells can have the nucleus removed and replaced with the hosts DNA thus creating an embryonic stem cell with the DNA markers of the patient. The delay in advancing Stem cell's is at least a decade now as without use of embryonic stem cells they haven't developed the techniques to properly use them even if they do find a way to make adult version stem cells without using embryonic material.

      The great fear of the abortion movement is that the public would become aware that the vast majority of embryonic material wouldn't be from abortion (where 95% of the material is mutilated tissue of little value) but the unused fertilized eggs contained in hundreds of thousands of fertility clinics around the country that are no longer needed by the parents that successfully produced children. Most importantly that these parents would then donate these unused fertilized eggs to curing diseases like Alzheimer and cancer, regrowing damaged organs or new skin for burn patients. It's ironic that the anti-abortion movement would rather see the eggs destroyed than used.

    5. Re:Just around the corner... by !coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Um.. You DO realize that what you refer to as "Big Pharma" are multinational business corps with many research facilities spread throughout the globe, who make extensive use of grant programs to get Universities worldwide to do some of their legwork, and who basically have their hands in pretty much all the "pies". There aren't US "Big Pharma" corps, anymore than there are European "Big Pharma".. They boil down to just a handful of entities who directly own or control hundreds (if not more) of subsidiaries, and they're ALL global players.

      Yes, the fact that the previous US President banned research on (embryonic) stem cells did put a wrinkle on the worldwide research being done in the field.. On the one hand, the US market for drugs and medical treatments is too big to ignore, so there was less of an incentive to develop technologies, procedures and know-how on stuff that the big corps might not be able to deploy in such a profitable market (and thus reducing their perceived return on that investment). On the other hand, there are many great minds working in those fields in the US (both native and foreigners), often with ties to education institutions, and it wouldn't be so easy to uproot all those people just so they could send them somewhere where they could legally do/continue research.

      So, for the "Big Pharma" it just made sense to look into other venues of research, or for ways to bypass the ban by using other types of cells with which you could eventually get the same results. And in this regard, while I consider the ban to have been a huge mistake (especially the totally bogus reason for said ban), we haven't really lost anything because the other venues pursued would have to be done eventually anyway, all the better that it happened when the corps were so eager to get results that could translate into money.

      I don't know if there were (many) other countries following suit on the ban, but I do know that it was and still is a sensitive issue in many countries in Europe, so maybe in the end the money ended up drying in other places too.. But it hasn't been completely abandoned either, as I remember reading several studies published these last 8 years relating to research done on embryonic stem cells.

      Directly and indirectly, the US does have a BIG impact in the world in many areas (which is probably why so many of us follow what happens over there so closely -- and become so obnoxiously opinionated).. But don't think others wouldn't step forward to pick up the slack if you guys over there went the Amish way, either. :)

    6. Re:Just around the corner... by bigbird · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's ironic that the anti-abortion movement would rather see the eggs destroyed than used.

      The anti-abortion movement would rather not have unused fertilized eggs lying around in the first place to create such ethical dilemmas.

      And besides, using the fertilized eggs does destroy them.

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      Great Windows SFTP Server!
  4. Not quite... by GravitonMan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    Killing babies still has a much better chance of growing me a new liver.

    /bring me another beer!

    1. Re:Not quite... by heatseeker_around · · Score: 5, Insightful

      as my wife (who does research and writes articles in neuroscience) says: 90% of the research is to find something enough interesting to get more money for your researches. It's not bad, it simply is how it works in science research. When you write an article, you always have to project your discovery into the future and tell how it will (not would) affect and save the life of many sick people, even if you know it will happen in 100 years at last.

  5. Lame lame lame by grub · · Score: 5, Funny

    Make stem cells the way nature intended: from aborted fetuses.

    Quit wimping around.

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    Trolling is a art,
    1. Re:Lame lame lame by drosboro · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And deal with anti-rejection drugs? I'd rather not.

      Clearly it's rather early on, but this does seem like a promising advance... it would be interesting to see if the same technique could be used in other areas - delivering useful genes to somatic cells, cancer cells, etc. It might have interesting implications for gene therapy research.

  6. By the way... by damn_registrars · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

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    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  7. Re:article by drosboro · · Score: 5, Informative

    Oh, and there's a news story linked from Nature's front page on the topic:

    http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090227/full/458019a.html

    It also links to a second paper at:

    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nature07864.html

  8. Also as important... by Y.A.A.P. · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  9. The real deal - now if we can just get funding... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  10. Re:Unlimited stem cells by jcwayne · · Score: 3, Funny

    Dupes are the left over stem cells that refused to differentiate.

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  11. Re:No cures forthcoming by Firethorn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    Then why hasn't Europe, Canada, or Australia, with national healthcare systems, found cures? Surely it'd be in their best interests to cure stuff?

    We've successfully cured cancer lots of times. The problem is that there's millions of versions of cancer; heck, you could say everybody who gets cancer gets their own, personalized version. A person can get cancer, completely separate, unrelated cancers, multiple times. Alzheimer's is ultimately fatal. A living patient is more likely to pay money for healthcare in the future than a dead one. They actually cured type 1 diabetes a couple times; they're working on fixing a problematic side effect(90% of the test group got cancer from the treatment). I think they're working on some gene therapies for parkinson's, not sure, have to head to work.

    Cancer's worse than the common cold for variants; surgery has gotten a lot better(laparoscope and such); welcome to evolution; vaccines still work great.

    1. No way - we have enough problems with medical malpractice. I'd like to fire the worst 2% or so.
    2. Agreed. Medical knowledge has significantly outpaced the ability of a MD to store it in his head
    3. There's a limit to how much you can specialize; everything in the human body interrelates. I'm serious. Dentists need to know some heart stuff because messing around with your teeth can screw up your heart.
    4. Good idea; goes along with my idea of firing the worst 2% or so.

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    I don't read AC A human right
  12. Amusing in a pathetic way by argStyopa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...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.

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