Medical Milestone: Scientists Reset Human Stem Cells

SternisheFan sends news that researchers from the University of Cambridge have made a breakthrough in the production of human pluripotent stem cells. The goal when developing this kind of stem cell is to have them as early in the cell's lifecycle as possible, so that they're more like true embryonic stem cells and can fulfill whatever role is needed. But all of them made so far are advanced slightly down their developmental pathway. The new work, published in the journal Cell (abstract), has found a way to "reset" the cells by introducing two genes that induce a developmental "ground state."

Comments

Re:hoooray

[NotInHere]

What affects the 1%ers today will affect the 99%ers tomorrow. This was true for Electric Light and phones in cars, and will be true for imortality.

Milestone?

[NotInHere]

For calling a scientific advancement a milestone you need to be either really sure, or have a bloating press. Einstein's theory wasn't regarded as "milestone" until the solar eclipse 1919. Are they already really sure yet?

Replacement Organs

[old_kennyp]

I would love to know if and when this sort of research will be able to provide replacement organs for those in need.
My Wife had Kidney failure 14 years ago, and receive a family members kidney 4 years later. The cost and problems associated with anti rejection drugs, although minor compared to Dialysis, do take their toll.
I am dreading the day the current kidney fails and as it health is slowly declining, that will be sometime in the next 10 years probably

To be able to have a new kidney created from her own cells would negate the need to most of those drugs and the associated issues with them. To me it would be work $10 - 20k to have one made

Re:Replacement Organs

[jbeaupre]

It will be a lot more expensive than that. Harvesting from a donor means using a "free" kidney. Free in that no one had to be paid to make it. Here are some prices of dissimilar items:

I work with several biomedical companies. A simple metal part can cost $10k. And that's not gouging. Getting that metal part to clinical trials took millions of dollars and 15 years. The amount of testing and paperwork are outrageous. But easier to make than a kidney.

An artificial leg for above the knee amputation can cost $50k and up. Those guys are gouging. But easier to make than a kidney.

I would expect a lab grown kidney to go for $50k-$100k, not including implantation costs. And that's IF they figure out a cheap way to make them.

And ironically, your wife would probably be denied insurance coverage for it. Because she already has a kidney.

(On a related side note, I worked on a non-sterile dialysis system that was so cheap, we couldn't figure out how to make money from it. A few hundred bucks a year, could be done at home, 0% risk of infection. We donated the research and $100k to a research hospital.)

Thank God

[JimSadler]

If this technology can become common place the suffering of the multitudes could be greatly reduced. I don't have a clue as to how many chronic diseases might be eliminated but I suspect that many diseases could be eliminated in the afflicted. For example can we roll back the clock for a person afflicted with Parkinson's disease to a time before the disease expressed itself in the patient? Think what that could mean for people like Michael J. Fox and many millions of folks.

Re:hoooray

[Idou]

This is absolutely right, and I would go further to say that this kind of technology cannot be perfected without mass adoption. For instance, there is priceless value to the smart phone industry of having billions of "testers," an expansive variety of users that drives a healthy community of app developers, and a high enough density of adoption to justify wireless infrastructure investment. In the end, the economic value of the combined smart-phone user base is probably many times more than whatever resources the 1%ers could pool together to invent a technology that only they would use.

Now, consider the fact that medical treatment carries significantly more intrinsic risk to the user than smart-phone usage (though user born risk varies. . .), and it is hard to see why 1%ers would try to monopolize this technology. On the contrary, I think any rational person with significant wealth and interest would invest in ways to bring this technology to a large enough population in order to ensure related treatments could be confirmed safe at a statistical level.

Re:hoooray

[NotInHere]

Yeah meant the nonsuspectibility to death, not the apple product for ghosts.

Re: hoooray

[Anonymous Coward]

The amazing thing about nature, it will always find a way to kill you! Sooner or later she's going to get you. Appreciate the beauty :-)

I don't "appreciate the beauty" of cancer, alzheimers, stroke, dementia or any of the other similarly horrendous ways that nature kills people. It seems to me that many people develop a form of bizarre Stockolm Syndrome when they confront the horrors of disease. I suppose the horrors are too harsh to face. This bizarre form of celebrating suffering and death seems particulaly concentrated on the diseases of aging, likely due to the fact that modern medicine has managed to dramatically reduce the threat from diseases not associated with aging (e.g. infectious diseases.) With the greatly reduced threat from these non-age-related diseases, the psychological defensiveness that leads to the perverse celebration of suffering doesn't have the same impetus to emerge as it does with the still ongoing threats (ie disease and death caused by aging)

As someone who has managed to avoid this defensive Stockolm syndrome mentality, I see that the real beauty is in humanity developing technology that eliminates the blind cruel amoral causes of suffering that nature has plagued humanity with for millenia. I welcome the beautiful technology of regenerative medicine, the end of disease and the suffering of aging, and hopefully this latest breakthrough speeds its realization and deployment.