Stem Cells: March 2008 Archives
It's currently happening in the US regarding stem cell research.
And may soon also happen in the UK.
From the BBC:
things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.
So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor.
Catch the trade winds in your sails."
~Mark Twain
Ruarri Serpa
Issue date: 3/25/08
Boston-area medical experts called for more uniform federal stem cell research policies, and said having inconsistent policies leads to less collaboration among scientists and misconceptions that give the public a negative view of the field.
Harvard Medical Center pediatric instructor William Lensch, who is affiliated with the Stem Cell Institute, said public policy has had "chilling effects" on stem cell research, making it impractical for universities and research institutions to study it, during a panel discussion at the Boston Bar Association.
Media Credit: Sabina RoslyakovaStem cell researcher William Lensch and lawyer Patrick Taylor debate the ethical and legal issues limiting stem cell research.
"Policy has been tough on research," Lensch said. "We can't even determine how much damage has been done, because nothing has even happened yet."
"There tends to be duplicated effort between institutions," Lensch said. He said institutions tend to collaborate on research, and said if other states followed the example of California, a leader in stem cell funding and standards, they could better work together.
He addressed stem cell research opponents who say the work destroys life, but said most cell populations are created in vitro -- in a Petri dish -- and not taken from a fetus. "Inaccurate" ideas, like calling the process cloning, generates hysteria, Lensch said.
Children's Hospital Boston deputy general counsel Patrick Taylor said self-regulation like International Society for Stem Cell Research's international ethics standards, should be used as a guideline for policy-making.
"A human research regulation structure just doesn't exist yet," he said. "It is being hand-built."
In 2001, President George W. Bush signed an executive order restricting federal funds to research on existing embryonic stem cells and making it illegal to use federal funds to destroy an embryo for stem cell research.
Taylor said strict limits on federal funding force states to create their own policies based on individual ethical decisions and available funds. Institutions cannot accept research done out-of-state if states' policies do not have similar research standards, he said.
Scientists' limited access to resources has led some institutions to consider commercial research, Taylor said. The problem with commercial research is that the data is not as widely shared because of commercial licenses, he said.
Taylor said the University of Massachusetts should get more analysis data from other research institutes. Last week the State Senate approved Gov. Deval Patrick's $1 billion Life Sciences Bill, approved by the House earlier this year.
COOL! Just like a lizard's tail...
It's true, this is the holy grail of medicine. And we got to see a glimpse of it with Andy & Sofia.
Medicine's Cutting Edge: Re-Growing Organs
(CBS) Imagine re-growing a severed fingertip, or creating an organ in the lab that can be transplanted into a patient without risk of rejection. It sounds like science fiction, but it's not. It's the burgeoning field of regenerative medicine, in which scientists are learning to harness the body's own power to regenerate itself, with astonishing results. Correspondent Wyatt Andrews brings you to the scientific frontier.
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON, March 23 (Reuters) - Researchers who used cloned embryonic stem cells to treat Parkinson's disease in mice said on Sunday they worked better than other cells.
The researchers were trying to prove that it is possible to make embryonic stem cells using cloning technology and use them to provide a tailor-made treatment.
But they found that a mouse's own cloned stem cells were far less disruptive to its body than cloned cells taken from other mice.
"It demonstrated what we suspected all along -- that genetically matched tissue works better," said Viviane Tabar of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York, who worked on the study.
"When you give the other type of tissue, non-autologous tissue, you get more inflammation than we anticipated. This is in a lab animal where we expect it to be tolerant. Normally when you do this in mice, you don't give matched cells," Tabar added in a telephone interview.
The mice given non-matched brain cells did more poorly than the mice given cells from their own clones, the researchers reported in the journal Nature Medicine.
Stem cells are the master cells of the body and embryonic stem cells are the ultimate master cells, giving rise to all the other cells and tissue. Cloning researchers hope one day to be able to take a little piece of skin and grow embryonic stem cells from it for personal, tailor-made medical treatments.
One disease always named that may benefit from this technology is Parkinson's. The incurable, fatal illness is caused by the destruction of specific brain cells.
THERAPEUTIC CLONING
It is sometimes treated with transplants of brain cells from cadavers or aborted fetuses. Stem cell researchers have argued that cloning technology might provide a better source of cells for treatment.
Tabar and his team first created a Parkinson's-like disease in mice using chemicals to destroy their brain cells.
They took ordinary cells from the tails of the mice, transferred the nuclei from them into hollowed-out mouse eggs cells, and made clones of the mice. This process is called somatic cell nuclear transfer, or "therapeutic cloning".
The cloned embryos were harvested for their stem cells after a few days. The researchers grew these in the lab and coaxed them into becoming the so-called dopaminergic brains cells that are lost in Parkinson's.
They put these into the brains of the injured mice. These mice got better, Tabar said.
No one has done this before. "It's incredibly hard and it involves a series of inefficient steps," Tabar said.
Several researchers have made cells that look and act like embryonic stem cells by reprogramming their genes. Tabar said her team would try using these so-called induced pluripotent stem cells in the same way.
Some people oppose using cloning technology to make human embryonic stem cells, or to creating human embryos for this purpose. It is also difficult to obtain human egg cells.
Scientists hope the induced pluripotent stem cells might provide a short cut that no one would object to.
"This is an exciting step down the pathway of creating a self-specific stem cell and getting away from the ethical demands of traditional embryonic stem cells," said Richard Boyd, Deputy Director of the Monash Immunology and Stem Cell Laboratories in Victoria, Australia.
(Edited by Alan Elsner)
Link
Maura & Anne Marie are nurses at Six West, the stem cell transplant unit at Children's Hospital Boston. They visited Andy's school last Tuesday March 11 to talk to his classmates about his transplant.
It was a great presentation.
Thank you Maura & Anne Marie!
Andy feels more confident.
Andy's teacher reminded me that I'm not allowed to post pictures or videos...
Here is the script:
Andy Trevino
BTS powerpoint presentation script
Introduction
Hi I'm Maura, and this is Anne Marie. We are nurses at Children's Hospital in
So we have a little slide show. If you have a question at any time during our talk please raise your hand and we will try to answer your questions. We hope that you will listen, and participate, and even learn a little bit.
So let's get started...
This from Bloomberg:
Pope Benedict XVI has spoken out on social issues throughout his three-year papacy. He backs a current political initiative to outlaw abortions after 90 days and encouraged Catholics to abstain from a 2005 referendum on easing restrictive laws on fertility treatments, which failed to achieve the 50 percent participation level to make the vote to change the law binding.
The seven social sins are:
1. ``Bioethical' violations such as birth control
2. ``Morally dubious'' experiments such as stem cell research
3. Drug abuse
4. Polluting the environment
5. Contributing to widening divide between rich and poor
6. Excessive wealth
7. Creating poverty
