Stephen Hawking has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a disease that destroys motor neurons. So far, progress in understanding this disease has been relatively slow, mainly because it has been difficult to obtain a decent supply of living motor neurons affected by the condition. New research done by John Dimos and Kit Rodolfa from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute has created in the laboratory a plentiful supply of cells that have the same genetic makeup as a patient with a particular disease.
A paper published online in the journal,Science, describes how they created the first stem cell lines from the skin of an elderly sick person, then coaxed these cells to become nerve cells genetically matched to those that had gone bad in a patient's spinal cord. By comparing diseased cells to normal cells in a Petri dish, scientists hope to better understand what causes disease and test new drugs.
This research builds upon the research we posted Jan. 18 titled Human embryo cloned from skin.
Courtesy Ed Uthman Lesbian couples could one day have children who share both their genes. Karim Nayernia, Professor of Stem Cell Biology at Newcastle University, has applied for ethical approval from the university to use bone marrow stem cells from women to start experiments to derive female sperm.
“I think, in principle, it will be scientifically possible,” Prof Nayernia told New Scientist.
Other research is setting the stage for a gay man to donate skin cells that could be used to make eggs, which could then be fertilized by his partner’s sperm. A surrogate's uterus would be needed to bring the baby to term.
In Brazil, a team led by Dr Irina Kerkis of the Butantan Institute in Saõ Paulo claims to have made both sperm and eggs from cultures of male mouse embryonic stem cells in the journal Cloning and Stem Cells.
A whole class of hereditary diseases, including some forms of epilepsy, result from faulty DNA related to mitochondria. Starting with 10 severely abnormal embryos left over from traditional fertility treatment, researchers removed the nucleus, containing DNA from the mother and father, from the embryo, and implanted it into a donor egg whose DNA had been largely removed. The only genetic information remaining from the donor egg was the tiny bit that controls production of mitochondria. The embryos then began to develop normally, but were destroyed within six days.
"We believe that from this work, and work we have done on other animals that in principle we could develop this technique and offer treatment in the forseeable future that will give families some hope of avoiding passing these diseases to their children." said Patrick Chinnery, a member of the Newcastle team.
If you have an opinion on these types of research, feel free to comment.
Cut spinal cords, destroyed brain tissue, or damaged heart muscle can be repaired by injecting stem cells into the damaged area. Embryonic stem (ES) cells are like blank cells that give rise to every type of cell and tissue in the body. Using human embryos or unfertilized human eggs as a source of stem cells raised show-stopping opposition. Now stem cells have been produced from skin.
Two separate teams of researchers announced on Tuesday they had transformed ordinary skin cells into batches of cells that look and act like embryonic stem cells -- but without using cloning technology and without making embryos.
Both teams call the new cells induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells and say they look and act like embryonic stem cells.
The research was published online Tuesday by two journals, Cell and Science. The Cell paper is from a team led by Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University; the team published by Science was led by Junying Yu, working in the lab of stem-cell pioneer James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Thompson said the technique is so simple that "thousands of labs in the United States can do this, basically tomorrow." In contrast, the cloning approach is so complex and expensive that many scientists say it couldn't be used routinely to supply stem cells for therapy.
Remember the fraudulent research of South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk? A new analysis of Hwang's research indicates that the disgraced scientist actually did reach a long-sought scientific goal. It's just not the one he claimed.
Stems cells can self-renew or go through numerous cycles of cell division while maintaining their undifferentiated state. Stem cells also have the capacity to differentiate into any mature cell type. These unique properties make stem cells very promising in research toward fixing damaged nerves, diabetes, and Alzheimer's. But research involving stem cells has been limited because obtaining stem cells involved destroying human embryos.
Researchers found a way to use skin cells from an adult mouse to create stem cells like that of an embryo.
Four genes, which code for four specific proteins known as transcription factors, are transferred into the cells using retroviruses. The proteins trigger the expression of other genes that lead the cells to become pluripotent, meaning that they could potentially become any of the body's cells. Yamanaka calls them induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). "It's easy. There's no trick, no magic," says Yamanaka. Nature.
But the iPS cells aren't perfect, and could not be used safely to make genetically matched cells for transplant in, for example, spinal-cord injuries. Yamanaka found that one of the factors seems to contribute to cancer in 20% of his chimaeric mice. He thinks this can be fixed, but the retroviruses used may themselves also cause mutations and cancer.
"This is really dangerous. We would never transplant these into a patient," says Jaenisch.
In his view, research into embryonic stem cells made by cloning remains "absolutely essential". ScienceBlogs.com
"Human embryonic stem cells remain the gold standard for pluripotent cells, and it is a necessity to continue studying embryonic stem cells through traditional means." Jaenisch, MIT.edu/news
After more than two years of legal wrangling, California is free to spend over $3 billion during the next decade on stem cell research. California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) is now free to raise some $300 million per year by selling bonds. New Scientist
In the United Sates Congress, the House gave final approval on Thursday to legislation aimed at easing restrictions on federal financing of embryonic stem cell research, but Democratic leaders in both chambers conceded they were short of the votes needed to override a veto threatened by President Bush. Any effort to override a veto would begin in the Senate, where the bill passed April 11 on a 63-45 vote. Even counting the three Senate Democrats who were not present for the vote, passage was one vote shy of the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto. New York Times.
Meri Firpo, a former featured Scientist on the Spot, has been accused by a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives of breaking the law. According to Representative Dan Severson (R-Sauk Rapids) a 1973 state statue on human research appears to make the embryonic research that Dr. Fripo conducts illegal. The accusations came as state lawmakers debated in committee funding for embryonic stem cell research.
According to a recent Star Tribune article, “At the Stem Cell Institute, much of Firpo's work takes place within a locked, windowless 250-square-foot lab where every pen, every vial -- even the lab's share of ventilation -- must be carefully documented to ensure that it isn't paid for with federal dollars. The university is scrupulous about not using any of its state funding as well. With a budget of $250,000 scrounged from private donations, Firpo and others hunt for the information that will eventually, they believe, lead to cures for diabetes and other illnesses.”
Many other states, like Wisconsin, support stem cell research with state funding. Minnesota does not. Governor Tim Pawlenty campaigned for reelection as a supporter of stem cell research, but since the election has slid on the issue, and now says he would only support public funding if it did not include destroying embryos. The alternatives he supports, such as research that uses stem cells which are found in adults and in umbilical cords is not generally considered controversial.
As for the stem cells that come from embryos, the embryo is always destroyed in the process of harvesting the stem cells – a method of harvesting stem cells without destroying the embryo has not been developed. Dr. Firpo stated in her Scientist on the Spot feature, “The embryos we used to make human embryonic stem cell lines were from donors undergoing fertility treatments in a clinic. There were two types of embryos donated to my research program. The first (and most common) were those embryos that were discarded because they were determined to be too poor quality to make a woman pregnant. The second source was embryos that were frozen for the donor's use that were good quality, but were not needed for the donor's fertility treatment. The donors choose whether to keep the embryos, donate them or discard them. If they are discarded, they can choose to destroy them or to donate them for research.”
The University of Minnesota’s own Center for Bioethics has some great questions about embryonic stem cells and their use in medical research:
• When does a human embryo become a person?
• Should we use research methods that destroy human embryos to search for new therapies that could help people in the future?
• How far are we as a society willing to go to improve our health and lives?
• Where should the embryos for stem cell research come from?
• Will stem cell research lead to future genetic manipulation of cells? Will we cease to be human if that happens?
• What are we willing to spend on medical research and who should decide what is morally appropriate?
As for the accusations that Firpo’s research is illegal, Firpo states that she has been assured by the University that her research is legal, and that the statue Representative Severson referred to does not apply in this case.
With the federal government refusing to fund research into new embryonic stem cell lines, reports this week of a process that created them without destroying embryos in the process had scientists excited. But critics are claiming that the researchers overstated the implications of their work.
Stem cell research is a hot topic in our country these days. Much of the controversy surrounds embryonic stem cell research and the issue of extracting cells from, and in turn destroying, developing embryos.
If only there was a way to obtain stem cells without killing the developing embryo…
Well, it looks like there is.
Researchers have found a way to extract a single cell from an embryo to be used for stem cells, while keeping the embryo intact.
Usually, stem cells are removed from an embryo when they are about 4 or 5 days old and the embryo has developed into a microscopic hollow ball structure known as a blastocyst. Extracting cells from the blastocyst causes it to fall apart and destroys the embryo. The new research findings show that stem cells can be harvested from less developed embryos, those with only 8 to 10 cells, and can leave the embryos unharmed.
Sounds like a solution to the stem cell debate, doesn’t it?
However, there are still ethical concerns with the new stem cell research technique. Critics fear that an embryo that had a cell extracted from it will be less likely to be able to implant in the womb or will not develop properly, leading to health problems in the resulting child. Others are opposed because the extracted cell potentially could have developed into a new embryo itself.
It seems that the stem cell controversy will never end. But this discovery may be a step towards a solution.
What do you think? Is the new stem cell extraction technique ethical?
On July 25, 1997, researchers from Johns Hopkins University announced, at an international symposium on the ethics of human cloning and stem cells, that they had cultured human stem cells in their lab, using tissue taken from aborted human embryos. (Stem cells are the basic, unspecialized cells from which all other cells develop.) The researchers made the announcement before their research was published because they wanted to spark discussion that would establish guidelines for the ethical use of embryonic stem cells--a discussion that continues today.