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Scientists Can Grow Stem Cells In a Petri Dish
rift321 writes "Scientists safely created induced pluripotent stem cells from human stem cells, and grew them in a petri dish. The previous methods for creating iPSC's involved the use of retroviruses, which rendered the stem cells unacceptable for human implantation due to an increased risk of cancer and mutations. The researchers used a safer, albeit slower process to modify the skin cells, using a cell-penetrating peptide to deliver the needed genes into the cell (PDF). I'd like to hear if anyone has some insight into exactly how close that brings us to everyday-use of stem cells for regenerative therapy, and exactly what obstacles remain before such therapies can be put to use."
this looks pretty promising!
I can manifest those mutant powers I've always wanted!
I really hope it's that easy, I really do.
There's only one real obstacle. Make it affordable.
Todos mis movimientos están friamente calculados
Any heretic speech against the killing of embryos will not be tolerated and the heretics will pay dearly.
Though fetal stem cells (taken from aborted fetuses) may be useful for research, organs grown from them cause severe rejection in the recipient of the transplant.
The only way to overcome this rejection is to grow the organs from the adult stem cells taken from the recipient herself.
You should see the stuff that grows on MY dishes!
So wrong, maybe to you buddy! Some of us liked having our cells taste like baby. Mmmm..fetus.
WÌÌfÍ--ÍSÌÒÍ...Í...ÌHÌÍfÍÍÍ--ÍÍÍ
What a shame that only stem cells from a fetus are actually good for anything. Otherwise this could be promising.
:p
Yes, folks, that's sarcasm that will undoubtedly be confused with flamebait.
It depends what you mean. Stem cells are being used for a variety of therapies at the moment. If you mean growing complete organs then you probably have a while to wait. It's one thing to grow some cells in a petrie dish and quite another to convince them to organize into, say, a heart.
The innovation here is that they have a new approach to transform the cells into stem cells that may be safer than previous alternatives. For example, gene therapy commonly relies on viral vectors to insert genes to produce the proteins into the genome. However, because these insert randomly, they can inactivate genes involved in cell proliferation regulation etc. resulting in cancer. There are other approaches such as naked DNA transformation, but then the genes producing the proteins are generally not replicated or segregated evenly when the cell divides and are thus lost over successive divisions.
What these people have done, is to avoid all the usual problems by making the required proteins (already well known) for cell transformation in a bacterial system and adding a seqeuence to them that produces a cell penetrating end - similiar to that found in some viral proteins. This allows their proteins to penetrate the cells and activate pathways that inactivate/activate certain genes sets to make the cells pluripotent. These changes appear to be permanent and hold for over 35 passages.
As a side note, this is a burgeoning field of research. The efficiency and efficacy of certain protein products as above, and even genetic material, can be greatly enhanced by the addition of nuclear localisation sequences, certain histones and so on, without nasty side effects.
Stem cells are a treatment technology, or may lead to one. One of the likely targets for therapy is to replace lost cells in the substancia negra in the brain that occurs in Parkinson's disease. Having the stem cells means you have to induce them to develop into s-n types cells, find a way to put them into the center of the brain, avoid immune responses if any and infection from the operation. It would also be nice to see the new cells did not become malignant or die quickly due to the same things that caused the s-n cells to die in the first place. A researcher on a panel discussion part of the NYC PD Unity Day events guessed less than 10 years.
. . . now *that* will be cool!
. . . or, maybe not?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
If we can easily swap decaying/dead organs for fresh ones, How long will the average human live? Today it's generally seen that you can easily live 100 years or more, but people with fresh new organs? What of the mind? I wonder where this will lead for future developments.
The factors are not made in a bacterial system BTW. They are expressed in HEK293 (derived from human embryonic kidney) cells and the cell extract used.
You can grow what the hell you want as long as you cure leukemia along the way!
Uncomfortable truths well, 2.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
The whole idea is pretty simple: just delivering four key reprogramming proteins using shuttle of cell-penetrating peptide. Basing on experience of everyday life we may suppose that a simple solution is free of interference from large number of unknown factors, thus efficient. But that's not the case, the protocol developed by the authors leads to transformation of mere 0.001% of input cells, which is order of magnitude less than in protocols based on viral transfection, and perhaps orders of magnitude less than threshold for applications in medicine. Some improvement could be gained, however, if purified proteins were used. Moreover, this fibroblasts were used to some extent as "blackboxes" with transformation-inducing proteins provided and results checked out, but with no developed sense of what's going on inside, which constitute room another room for improvement.
Yo dawg, I heard you like science, so we let a scientist grow a scientist, so they can research while they research.
There is more to this than it is published in the paper. You can use the same trick to push your newly obtained iPSC to differentiate into the cell type you need. For example introduction of MyoD can turn them into muscle cells for treatment of muscular dystrophy.
You might recall the article about a woman who received a trachea transplant that was created from her own stem cells in Fall '08. That took place in Europe. The process for FDA clearance in the US is exceedingly cumbersome and conservative (I'm a biomedical engineer and this is a huge pain). It is a major milestone to be able to culture these cells, but this is still in the realm of science, not medicine. It may be decades before such technologies are commonly applied for medical treatments and, undoubtedly, the US will be last in line behind the other 1st world countries.
Based on the words of my stem cell buddies, making stem cells is relatively easy. The hard part is differentiating them into the tissue that you want -- safely. See if you inject stem cells into an animal (or a person http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55430/) you generally get a tumor. This creates a new paradigm of medicine. To get approved a normal drug goes through three phases of evaluation where phase I is "safety". With Stem cell treatment, Phase I is a very big deal. 537
You are aware that it went a little further than that aren't you? The block was extended to using anything that had ever had Federal money used on it. So if you used part of a prior grant to equip your lab for different research you had to scrap it all and start again. You couldn't even buy used equipment (or buildings) that might once have been paid for by Federal money.
Since most research facilities that could do this work had at some time used Federal money to do the research meant building a new lab and equipping it with all new equipment. That drove the "buy in" cost of doing the research way up.
What is wrong with using a miscarried fetus for the cells? How is that any different than havesting organs from a miscarried baby for transplants? Should that fetus/baby die in vain when it could save lives?
Creating stem cells from adult cells is so far mainly interesting for research purposes. The first hope of researchers is that in the petri dish, culture flask or microtiterplate, stem cells and stem cell derived cell lines may be better research tools than the current cell lines. The cell lines currently used in laboratories are often cancer cell lines and poorly representative of the cells in someones brain or liver. Stem cells may also help us to better understand cell development and what happens when it goes awry.
For therapeutic applications, the first applications may depend on finding drugs that stimulate stem cells to differentiate: It may not be necessary to inject stem cells or cell derived from stem cells, because we may all carry cells with a differentiation potential. For example, regions of the brain seem to contain cells that could potentially differentiate to help people who are suffering brain damage or degeneration.
However, controlling differentiation is complex. While only four factors are sufficient to induce any cell to revert to a stem-cell state, inducing a stem cell to become e.g. a motor neuron is a very complex process that needs to be controlled step by step.
The technical term is somatic cell nuclear transfer. (Don't worry, it has nothing to do with plutonium.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCNT The idea is that you'd make a new embryo but use the DNA from whomever the patient was. (Assuming their genetics were ok to do this.) You'd hopefully get embryonic stem cells that wouldn't get rejected. Unfortuantely one down side is that talking point about "We're just using embryos we'd throw away." would basically be a whole lot of nonsense. (Since you'd actually have to create new embryos to do it.) Of course the pro people would have to come up with a new talking point they could use endlessly while the anti-abortion people would flip out over murdering babies. (Of course I'm too old so I think both sides are full of excrement.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
The only real obstacle I guess the technology getting past the Politburo in the the "public domain".
No but seriously, much like there are too many variables already that need to be accounted for when altering a genome for therapeutic purposes, there are just as many outcomes for technologies like this once developed.
And I keep stressing - let's get sustainable agriculture sorted out first...
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If you you don't like what I just said, then move on.
"what obstacles remain before such therapies can be put to use."
The whining Christian pussies in control of the government will have something to complain about, I'm sure. They always do.
...this is GOOD news for everyone, right?
The people who demanded stem cells research be funded by the government (it was never banned, despite the rhetoric of the Left), now they will be able to gather as many stem cells as they want to follow any potential lead in terms of therapies.
The people who had moral qualms about the circumstances of gathering stem cells and the potential for abuse will be able to rest easy that there is NO moral context in the harvesting of petri-originated stem cells.
I know it's really, really hard not to fling poo at each other (if only from habit) but can we all agree this is a good thing?
-Styopa
I'm sorrowful. Sorrowful because of earlier comments. Is it really big achievement to read short paper and then write review of "Brief Report"? Nevertheless slashPOTTERS! The idea is quite old. Thomson et.al. described this idea in this paper: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/318/5858/1917 . There are earlier, but this one is good one and representative too.
I suppose that questions about possible mechanism come from ignorance and laziness. Partially answer can be found here :http://images.cell.com/images/Edimages/Cell/IEPs/3661.pdf
Besides, I think that questions about capabilities of lay out the mixture of proteins can be answer in following way. If we try to analyze how DNA vectors work into cells, we can conclude, that they impact on some part of biochemical pathways. They of course don't impact directly but through interactions with some others molecules e.g: proteins. Because this relation is injection (in mathematical sense ) so we can conclude, that deep analysis of DNA role in generating iPSCs can deliver us hints which proteins should we use. The best mixture we get (if our criterion is simplicity of mixture), when we find proteins in bijection relation with DNA vectors. Of course it is not simple task, but without analysis of genetic process in generating iPSCs we will able only to shoot wild.
If someone is interested about this subject I recommend this papers:
+ http://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/retrieve/pii/S1934590908005250
+ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17554338
The technical term is somatic cell nuclear transfer. (Don't worry, it has nothing to do with plutonium.)
Ha! That's gold. I've never seen a more subtle way to tell someone that you think they're a moron.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I've always wanted to ejaculate on a woman's period in a petri dish, wait 3 days, then install the fertilized egg into a chicken egg to keep it under a lamp for 4 months. Will it grow? Inquiring minds would like to know. Also of note, when I get realy randy I would dig a hole in the ground out beyond a line of trees and drop a couple cumwads and burry it: anyone ever see any of those walking tree men, or dendrites as they call them? I can almost swear that these new saplings have ears, maybe from me, and they can't be trusted to keep secrets (as I swore I wouldn't write any of this on slashdot, yet I did!)!
Sure we can be young again. Where there's a will, there's a way. The market for being young again is too big for it not to happen. The human body is simply made of molecules, and molecules can be manipulated. It's only a matter of time before we figure out how. Your statement that we can only be young once is like Bill Gates' statement that the world will never need more than 16K of RAM. I think it was former Intel CEO Andy Grove who made a speech complaining about how medical science thinks in much more limited ways than the rest of science and engineering do. Just remember med-boys -- the very biological systems you claim to know so much about ultimately owe their underpinnings to the more fundamental sciences like physics. So stop trying to dictate to the rest of us what can and cannot be done, when you guys are so loathe to even quote physics or any fundamental barrier laws. If there's no fundamental physical law opposing it, then you've no right (or credibility) in saying that it's impossible. Your field of study (medicine) is much inferior to other fields of study that are much more intimately based on interplay of logic and observation (engineering, physics), and much more steeped in weird traditions from bygone eras. It's like comparing auto mechanics to electrical engineers. I'm tired of hearing doctors who are so full of themselves pontificating pseudo-scientifically about how we can't do this or that. If you want to assert a limitation, then quote a barrier law -- or shut up!
The idea is that you'd make a new embryo but use the DNA from whomever the patient was. ... You'd hopefully get embryonic stem cells that wouldn't get rejected.
Isn't that pretty much what I said?
Of course the pro people would have to come up with a new talking point they could use endlessly while the anti-abortion people would flip out over murdering babies.
An actual treatment based on embryonic stem cells would certainly change the terms of the debate, but isn't that irrelevant as to whether or not adults stem cells are the only way to do certain things?
Republicans are afraid of slippery slopes, as always. If you start using the stem cells from miscarried fetuses, then that will create a market for miscarried fetuses. And fetuses are one of the few areas where Republicans do not support market solutions.
You may be interested in this:
http://www.avitamedical.com/?id=5&ob=1
It is a leading product in regenerative therapy and was used on the victims of the Bali Bombings way back when.
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
exactly what obstacles remain before such therapies can be put to use
Religious morons who are completely ignorant about everything involving science.
"The only way to overcome this rejection is to grow the organs from the adult stem cells taken from the recipient herself."
Or to modify the histamine complex on chromosome 6.
-- Terry
Actually ./ readers don't know each other so nobody gives a shit about other user's personal feelings unless they're expressed in an amusing way
Yes, maybe that's right. But based on some comments I almost sure about some level of capabilities of some writers.
The idea is old and everybody who read paper cited in the story knows that, but here reprogramming is epigenetically-triggered, i.e., there's transduction of proteins, not genetic material by viral vectors.
You have not understood me. I ment that the idea of reprogramming is quite old. If you prefer (please read slowly! ) generall idea (making iPSCs by virial vectors) is : VERY OLD in scientific scale of time. If readers of this paper look deeply into references of this, they will see that's true.
We are commenting on brief review because of it's briefness. Remember that you have only ~20 minutes for writing significant contribution, after then your post will be placed in the tail of the discussion, chances for never being moderated. Thus, comprehensive posts can be written if someone's already expert in the field, no time for quick literature search.
So why are you comment story? If you are not experts ,please read more papers, then become an experts and then - write. If You are the experts, it's great ! You are the best person to make comments. Remember that read can anyone who read /. ! You don't need to bring them infos which can recive themself for free !
If you want high score, please answer youself - do you want to have big score or right ?? If you want to have right, and you are not the expert - just read more about subject, and then write !! In other case you will be "The King of rats". The Q is : do you want to tell obvious things and get high score, or you want to have give wise observations? Your choice.
As is stated in one of the publications you gave link to, the set of four proteins is sufficient and in sense of search procedure involved, minimal. Moreover, if you consider the mechanism of fibroblast->hPS transformation by use of the four delivered proteins, you've probably got bijection between biological function (transcription factor, histone acetylation/methylation pattern modification) and proteins delivered.
Are you trying to explain me what I was claiming in my comment?? Yes. You got, that job done in paper I linked was good, and the autors found the bijection. But I'm not sure that you got why bijection is so important in analisis of this kind of problems . Of course the reason is not simplicity of mixture. The reason is because , if you get iPSCs what you will do with it?? You must to force then to specify. Where is the way, that you can find the simplest solution - how to force them?? Could you point of this Q ?