ENDEAVOUR FORUM NEWSLETTER No. 133, FEBRUARY 2009

 

 

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GREAT NEW DEVELOPMENTS WITH ETHICALLY DERIVED STEM CELLS

 

BABETTE FRANCIS

 

While there are amazing new treatments and cures from ethically derived stem cells, state and federal governments continue to waste taxpayers’ money on research with embryonic stem cells and cloning which involve the destruction of new human life and provide no cures. Write to your MPs telling them they are delaying treatments which you or your family or the MPs themselves may need.

From a single human hair!


The first reports of the successful reprogramming of adult human cells back into so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which by all appearances looked and acted like embryonic stem cells, created a media stir. But the process was relatively inefficient. Only one out of 10,000 cells could be persuaded to turn back the clock.

Now, a team of researchers led by Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, succeeded in boosting the reprogramming efficiency more than 100-fold, while cutting the time it takes in half. They repeatedly generated iPS cells from the tiny number of keratinocytes attached to a single hair plucked from a human scalp.

Their method, published ahead of print in the Oct. 17, 2008 online edition of Nature Biotechnology, not only provides a practical and simple alternative for the generation of patient- and disease-specific stem cells, but also spares patients invasive procedures to collect suitable starting material, since the process only requires a single human hair.

“Having a very efficient and practical way of generating patient-specific stem cells, which unlike human embryonic stem cells, wouldn’t be rejected by the patient’s immune system after transplantation brings us a step closer to the clinical application of stem cell therapy,” says Belmonte, PhD., a professor in the Gene Expression Laboratory and director, Center of Regenerative Medicine, Barcelona, Spain.

[Report October 21, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com≤/releases/2008/10/081017164917.htm

Another new source of stem cells
Scientists from Germany and the UK have found a new source of stem cells that could be as good as embryonic stem cells for researching and developing treatments for a range of serious diseases, but without the ethical problems of embryonic stem cells: from routine biopsies of testicles.

The discovery was the work of researchers from the Universities of Tübingen and Cologne in Germany, and King’s College, London, and was published on 8th October in the online issue of Nature. The lead author was Professor Thomas Skutella, who leads an experimental embryology group at Tübingen University.

For some time now scientists have been working to find alternative ways to make stem cells with the same ability to become any cell in the body as the embryonic stem cell. One such method that has been showing great promise recently is the induced pluripotent stem cell, or iPS cell. By taking a normal cell, such as a skin cell and inserting certain genes into its DNA, scientists have been able to reprogram the cell to regress to an earlier form when it still had the potential to become virtually any other cell of the body.

However, Skutella and colleagues had a hunch that there was another source of stem cells, ones that did not need to have genes inserted into their DNA to make them into cells that produce other cells, because they do that already: the sperm producing cells inside adult male testicles.

They succeeded in harvesting stable stem cells from spermatogonial (sperm producing) cells taken from routine tissue biopsies of the testes of 22 adult male humans. They showed that the cells could be coaxed into regressing to become cells from all three germ layers that form in the very early stages of a new human embryo. This was done by culturing them in the same way used to make embryonic stem cells differentiate.
Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/124974.php


 

 

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