Slashdot Mirror
Breakthrough In Stem Cell Culturing
Science Daily reports that for the first time, human embryonic stem cells have been cultured under chemically controlled conditions without the use of animal substances, which is essential for future clinical uses. "Now, for the first time, we can produce large quantities of human embryonic stem cells in an environment that is completely chemically defined," says professor Karl Tryggvason, who led the study at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet. "This opens up new opportunities for developing different types of cells which can then be tested for the treatment of disease."
Pah! Finally, those uncultured stem cells will learn the finer arts of high society!
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams [...]."
Along with the recent news of the creation of an artificial cell, it seems like biotechnology is the truly "hot" field these days.
They can find the cure for alzheimer's before I really have to worry about it.
why is this showing up as my newgrounds page?
We remove some of the ethical concerns that go with stem cell research. This should go a long way in advancing medical science.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Best of all; it happened in Europe, so we don't have to worry about some self-serving corporate trying to patent 'Chemically Controlled Stem Cell Culturing' to make $$$ for themselves at the cost of all humanities medical advancement.
As a diabetic, this is really good news for me! Stem cells could cure a failed pancreas.
With stems cells down the road. Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, aka therapeutic cloning. (If you thought people had moral problems with using embryonic stem cells man they're going to flip out over that one.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
...we're coming up on third quarter fiscal and corporate taxes are coming due. /Yes, I know I'm jaded.
Some important background that this article doesn't specifically mention (another one I read did), in 2008, that same lab had shown this was possible with mouse stem cells. That's not to knock them, just it's important to point out that these things don't just come from out of the blue, nor does biology move as quick as we would like. This group has been working on showing this goes on in human stem cells for at least 2 years, who knows how long it took them to find this out in mice, or narrow down this one specific protein. Those years between when they discovered it in mice and showing it in humans probably also represents a lot of work. Science is hard.
I would guess that the next step, maybe one they're already working on, is to show that induced pluripotent stem cells can be cultured on this same protein. IPsC are when they take cells from your own body and make them revert back to a similar state to embryonic stem cells, to where they can then be turned into any cell type you want (the advantage there being they're your cells so you wouldn't get tissue rejection like you would with embryonic stem cells.)
Three big barriers to using IPsC for therapy were/are 1. that they were made using viral transfection of cancer-causing genes, 2. culturing them required feeder cells which the article describes why that's bad, and 3. it's hard to completely differentiate a population of pluripotent cells into one cell type you're trying to get. There have been some breakthroughs on 1, last I heard a group had shown you can just culture with modified proteins to induce pluripotency. This is a breakthrough on 2. Unfortunately 3 might be harder. You want to be sure you've differentiated all the stem cells before you put them into a patient. If you inject stem cells into a patient, they're going to get one of the worst types of tumors: teratomas, so you want to be absolutely sure you've gotten them all. And each different cell type seems to differentiate in different ways. We might figure out how to turn stem cells completely into skin cells, but that may not help us learn how to turn a culture of stem cells into brain cells.
Nonetheless, this was an important 2 part solution to a barrier to using stem cells to their full potential. Double kudos to them, they've made a real contribution here.
I watched the decline happen with my father-in-law, and the days when he was totally lucid may have been the worst of all for him, because he could see his situation and understand the terrible things he'd said and felt in his less lucid days. The disease was a daily torture for the man, and I know that under a similar diagnosis and with the current state of medicine as it is, my own choice would be more sudden and immediate.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Patent application title: COMPOSITION AND METHOD FOR ENABLING PROLIFERATION OF PLURIPOTENT STEM CELLS
Authors: Karl Tryggvason, Anna Domogatskaya, Sergey Rodin, a subset of the authors of the paper referenced at the end of TFA. I don't know enough about stem cells to say that the patent application is identical to TFA, but it's on at least highly similar subject matter. Prof. Tryggvason has over 30 patents as per his bio on the Biolamina corporate website, a company he co-founded. As a scientist currently trying to bring some academic research out of the lab and into deployment, I can tell you that this is just how things are done. It isn't perfect, but without the protection of a patent it's hard to see any company willingly expose itself to the massive risk and cost of developing, producing, testing, and marketing Prof. Tryggvason's work without the profit motive that patents protect.
Sorry, but this is not a significant breakthrough. Not going xeno-free has been an issue if convenience, not capability. Invitrogen has been selling a xeno-free matrix for hESC growth for 1-2 years now. I've used it and it works just fine. Replacing all of the animal components in hESC media is costly but conceptually pretty easy. Furthermore, I'd imagine that all of the stem-cell companies (Geron, Advanced Cell, and Novocell) w/ therapies moving towards the clinic already have their own proprietary xeno-free conditions.
There goes one of my excuses for running away from fights now :-(
Won't someone think of the children?
Obama lifted Bush's 2001 ban in 2009. If embryonic stem cell research hadn't been banned by Republicans pandering to theocrats and drug corps for so long, this technique that finally unleashes stem cells for therapies might have been developed 8 years earlier.
Maybe my paraplegic college buddy who starved himself a year ago instead of continuing life in a wheelchair with chronic pain and steadily failing organs might have at least had real evidence for hope. Bush killed him, and who knows how many other people.
--
make install -not war