Embryonic Stem Cells to be Bailed Out By Adult Stem Cells?

Will Embryonic Stem Cells Ever Cure Anything?

Why not just use adult IPS cells, and forget the surgeries AND the pin pricks? The focus on embryonic stem cells is misguided. I think maybe the problem lies with the focus on cash: embryonic stem cells can be sold as a pre-packaged product, and for a good amount. Adult stem cells are created for each individual, and the process will likely become a cheaper, localized process which pays little or nothing to the pharmaceutical investors. As always, I vote for IPS; it's far ahead of embryonic stem cells, and the reasons are obvious.

A Headline I Never Expected To See

In Medical First, Scientists Implant Lab-Grown Vaginas in Humans

I had no idea that this was needed.

More Adult Stem Cell Progess

There is now such a thing as a "skin gun", which sprays stem cells onto burn areas, much like spray painting your walls. Also there is a "skin printer" in development which will print stem cells, possibly with more precision one would think than the spray gun.

And there is now a bone repair technique using skin cells from abdominal fat which is promising.

Adult stem cells, all of them. I still hold a special disgust for the hysterical promoters of embryonic stem cells. But there seems to be a chilly silence from them now.

Actual Health Care Advances Are Technological, Not Political

I have long been a fan of adult stem cell progress (as opposed to embryonic stem cell's certainty of failures despite their Leftist cheering section). Now 3D printing is reaching the stage of technical adolescence and under Moore's Law might reach the needy patient in my lifetime. Or so it appears. Printing living human organs has passed the viability stage and is moving into the engineering stage, where complete or at least sufficiently capable organs will be manufactured to order for specific individuals. An example is creating a nipple and areola for breast cancer patients. But even more interesting is the creation of organs with embedded electronics, such as the ear with sensors and amplifiers. Who knows where this could go? And where can I invest my remaining 73 cents?

An Amazing Adult Stem Cell Breakthrough

The march of adult stem cells is accelerating, while embryonic stem cell progress has apparently stalled.

This particular advance is actually spectacular and visual: if you are interested in stem cells at all, you will like this video. What you will see is a group of heart cells formed into tissue which is beating, just like the heart itself.

The knowledge gained under the iPS ("induced Pluripotent Stemcell") medical research march includes the fact that the beating of the heart is not controlled by the brain, it is controlled from within the tissue itself. The implication of this is boggling, and sure to present further obstacles to the arguments against self-contained agency and the absence of anything called "life".

And as an aside, none of this actual science is either predicated upon or requires that mutation/selection be a precipitating hypothesis, or even be true at all. In fact, the odds against mutating into, and selecting for a self-throbbing organ providing blood supply via an entire self-enclosed (tubular), closed-system (recirculating) vascular array throughout the body, which the body can't live without, is indiscernible from p = 1. And that's not even accounting for the lungs and the oxygenation, or the nutritional transport and RNA repair functions which are enabled by the flow of blood to all areas of the body.

And another aside: dinosaurs had ribs, ribs imply lungs, lungs imply bloodflow, bloodflow implies a vascular system. And this existed in a very short time, geologically speaking, after the existence of only sponges and unicellular animals.

The advent of iPS just might be the beginning of the largest jump in knowledge, actual knowledge, produced via biology. It will probably completely change the medical profession by jumping it to a new plateau of almost non-invasive solutions to currently intractable health problems.

Correction: Link fixed

EU Court Denies Stem Cell Patents Involving Embryo Destruction.

AFP - Europe's top court on Tuesday banned researchers from patenting any process to extract stem cells when it leads to the destruction of a human embryo.

In a ruling that could affect medical research, the EU Court of Justice court said the use of human embryos "for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes which are applied to the human embryo and are useful to it is patentable."

"But their use for purposes of scientific research is not patentable," the court ruled.

The EU judges were asked by the German Federal Court of Justice to provide an interpretation of a human embryo following an appeal from a German scientist, whose patent on a method to create nerve cells from human embryonic stem cells was ruled invalid.

The scientist, Oliver Bruestle, said there were already clinical applications for his invention to treat patients with Parkinson's disease.

But the Luxembourg-based court said that "a process which involves removal of a stem cell from a human embryo at the blastocyst stage, entailing the destruction of that embryo, cannot be patented."

France International News

Stem Cells for Diabetes, plus: Sell your Eggs For $8,000

Stem cells taken from the neural cells of diabetic rats have been used to reverse the rat's own diabetes.

Contrast this news with the big news from embryonic stem cells: cloned embryonic stem cells have been made... but they contain three sets of chromosomes and are therefore useless (!):

"There's one problem: the cells contain an extra set of chromosomes, which means they could never be used to grow tissues for transplantation from a patient's own cells – the ultimate goal. But having at last shown that there is no block to making cloned human stem cells, biologists are optimistic that it should be possible to find a solution to the chromosome problem."

In other words, the big news is that they still don't have a solution for a disease. Or even a viable source of (ethical?) stem cells. In fact, this process appears to be a side road to adult stem cells. They are taking an individual's skin cells, fusing them with an "unfertilized human egg", and hoping to create an egg containing cloned stem cells for an already born person.

But these appear to be unnecessary due to the tsunami of adult stem cell solutions which are already coming on-line. But there are government grants for messing around with human eggs, so someone will take them up on it.

But another issue arises: read the following while keeping a straight face:

"they were able to pay women to donate their eggs for research"

In other words, they bought eggs from women: they created a market for human eggs. The "donation" angle is untenable; the women were already being paid for their eggs. They expanded the market for eggs into the area of destructive research.

Indeed, Egli used to work in the lab of Kevin Eggan at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who this week describes his team's abject failure to find women who were prepared to donate their eggs for free for similar experiments.

In the US, women are typically paid several thousand dollars when donating their eggs to infertile couples undergoing IVF, compensating for the time and discomfort involved. The New York team piggybacked on this process by asking women who had already decided to donate if they wanted to provide eggs for research, instead. Those who agreed were then paid the same $8000 fee given to IVF egg donors.

Approaching women who were already committed to donating their eggs "was quite creative", says Insoo Hyun, a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He believes the approach reduces concerns about women being lured to donate for financial reasons. But ethical objections to the research will remain, as isolating hESCs still involves destroying a blastocyst embryo."

Creating a market for eggs to be cloned, grown into a blastocyst, then destroyed? Proving once again that ungrounded "ethics" is relative, and that science is not a repository for ethical standards. Moreover, the $8,000 per egg is undoubtedly coming out of taxpayer pockets.

Stem Cells Produce New, Functional Brain Cells

"Radiation treatment for brain cancer can be lifesaving, but it can come at a terrible cost. The radiation that kills cancer cells also kills brain cells, destroying memories, impairing intelligence, and causing confusion.

"Charles Limoli and colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, have shown that stem cells could help reverse some of this damage. In a new paper in the journal Cancer Research, Limoli shows that it's possible to cause new brain cells to grow by injecting human neural stem cells into the brains of mice whose cognitive abilities had been damaged by radiation. The mice regained lost skills after the stem-cell treatment.

"Stem cells have long been used to repair the damage caused by cancer treatment. Bone-marrow transplants for leukemia rely on stem cells to replenish blood cells, for instance. But Limoli says his team is the only one using neural stem cells to treat symptoms in the brain.

"Several peers praised his work, calling it an important proof of the idea that human stem cells can repair neuronal damage.

"The results are very promising," says Howard B. Lieberman, professor of radiation oncology and environmental health sciences at Columbia University. "If the findings continue to be as positive as what's published in this paper, I would assume Dr. Limoli will take great effort to try to move it into the clinic as quickly as possible."

"Limoli's team irradiated three groups of mice, later treating two of them with human neural stem cells. The third, a control group, received a shttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifham surgery, but no cells were implanted. One month after the damage, 23 percent of implanted stem cells were active in the brains of the first group of mice. After four months, 12 percent were still active in the second group. Using cellular labeling, Limoli's team also showed that tens of thousands of new neurons and astrocyte cells had grown in the brains of the treated mice. The treated mice performed better than the untreated ones on cognitive tests, and recovered their preradiation abilities.

"Protein activity in the treated mice suggests that the implanted stem cells are integrating into the brain, Limoli says, replacing cells that have been lost or damaged."

Technology Review, MIT

Bad News for Stem Cells

Brain cells have been created directly from skin cells without going through the intermediate step of regressing the skin cells into stem cells. (Are induced stem cells now obsolete? Already?).

"Skin cells from a 30-year-old woman have been turned directly into mature nerve cells similar to those found in the brain using a procedure that promises to revolutionise the emerging field of regenerative medicine.

"Scientists said they were astonished to discover that they could convert a person's skin tissue into functioning nerve cells – bypassing an intermediate stem-cell stage – by the relatively simple procedure of adding a few short strands of RNA, a genetic molecule similar to DNA.

"The breakthrough could soon lead to the generation of different types of human brain cells in a test tube which could be used to study a range of neurodegenerative conditions such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.

"'A major problem in neurobiology has been the lack of ahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif good human model. Neurons aren't like blood. They're not something people want to give up,' said Gerald Crabtree, professor of pathology at Stanford University Medical Centre in California.

"The findings may also one day allow doctors to grow nerve cells directly from a patient's skin cells to regenerate damaged parts of their brain or spinal cord. It would for instance bypass the need to produce stem cells by creating human embryos or embryonic-like tissue."

Wired.com

Actual Teeth From Stem Cells

Stem cells from mouse molars have been used in Japan to produce teeth, which were transplanted into the mouth of juvenile mice. The teeth became functional, even with detectable nerves, allowing the mice to chew normally.

From Medical Xpress:

”Researchers from Japan recently published a paper in PLoS One describing their successful growth and transplantation of new teeth created from the stem cells of mice.

“In order to create these teeth, Takashi Tsuji from Tokyo University of Science and his team removed two different stem cells from the molar teeth of mice. They took these stem cells to grow in the laboratory. In order to control how the teeth grew, as far as shape and length, the stem cells were placed in a mold to grow.
Once the cells grew into full tooth units, the researchers then transplanted them into the jaws of one-month-old mice. These transplanted teeth fused with the jaw bones and tissues on an average of about 40 days. The researchers were also able to detect nerve fibers growing in the new teeth.

“The mice that received the transplanted teeth were able to eat and chew normally without any complications.

“Tsuji hopes that this new development will help further the research being done to allow for the growth of human organs from a patient’s own stem cells. Currently researchers do not have the ability to culture three-dimensional organs outside of the body. The hope is the growth of these teeth will be the beginning step that is needed.”

I love adult stem cell science. If I were to start over, it might be in this part of biology (certainly not evolution apologetics). The bad news here is that I don’t have my molars any more. Plus it's way too late to start over.

From Stem Cells to Partial Eyeballs

From New Scientist, which refers to Nature:

"Mouse stem cells have been coaxed into forming a partial eyeball, and the method may one day lead to retina transplants.

"Yoshiki Sasai at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, and colleagues encouraged embryonic stem cells to develop into retinal cells, and then grew them alongside a protein matrix to promote the formation of tissue.

"Over 12 days, the retinal cells formed a vesicle which subsequently transformed into a cup-like structure. Within this "optic cup", six major types of retinal cells were identified. They had spontaneously arranged themselves into six different layers, mimicking those seen in the adult retina.

"While it is not yet possible to generate a fully formed eye – including a lens, sclera and cornea – Sasai says it may be feasible to use human stem cells with minor modifications to generate retinal tissues large enough for human transplantation in the next few years.

"'The retina is severely impaired in genetic diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa. This replacement therapy would become practical once human retina tissue is available by our method,' says Sasai."

While this is embryonic stem cell research on mice, its final implementation might well be in adult stem cells in humans. This research doesn't care about the potential for tumors and rejection that comes with embryonic stem cells, nor does it have any ethical considerations.

More Non-embryonic Stem Cell Successes

Futurepundit reports that donor stemcells (non-embryonic) have been successful in growing a trachea on scaffolding, a replacement for a girl with a cancerous trachea.

Other donor stemcell/scaffolding successes have been for livers (in rats), knee and joint tissue, and heart tissue.

Adult Stem Cells In Situ

Non-embryonic stem cell breakthroughs continue at a breakneck pace. This one is a possible use of cells already in the heart which are switched to stem cells without removing them from the body for the conversion procedure. A promise of heart regeneration with a mere injection of a conversion soup seems incredible, but now possible.

”In as little as five years, researchers hope to be able to coax the heart into regenerating itself, repairing the damage caused by cardiac arrests and old age.

The revolutionary treatment could be possible after scientists discovered a technique for turning ordinary connective tissue into muscle cells inside the heart.

It works in a similar way to stem cells but instead of the new cells being grown outside the body and then injected back in, the technique simply makes the cells switch at the point where they are needed.”

And,

”The team found that they needed a combination of just three substance – Gata4, Mef2c, and Tbx5 – to efficiently convert fibroblasts into cells that could beat like cardiomyocytes.

One day after the three factors were introduced into mouse hearts, fibroblasts turned into cardiomyocyte-like cells within the beating heart. Up to 20 per cent eventually made the switch.

‘The ability to reprogram fibroblasts into cardiomyocytes has many therapeutic implications,’ explained Dr. Srivastava who published his findings in the journal Cell.

‘Half of the cells in the heart are fibroblasts, so the ability to call upon this reservoir of cells already in the organ to become beating heart cells has tremendous promise for cardiac regeneration.’ “.

Stem Cells From Blood

This seems major:

"Blood drawn with a simple needle stick can be coaxed into producing stem cells that may have the ability to form any type of tissue in the body, three independent papers report in the July 2 Cell Stem Cell. The new technique will allow scientists to tap a large, readily available source of personalized stem cells.

Because taking blood is safe, fast and efficient compared to current stem cell harvesting methods, some of which include biopsies and pretreatments with drugs, researchers hope that blood-derived stem cells could one day be used to study and treat diseases — though major safety hurdles remain."

Stem Cells for Parkinson’s

More success with ADULT stem cells:

"Stem cells derived from the endometrium (uterine lining) and transplanted into the brains of laboratory mice with Parkinson's disease appear to restore functioning of brain cells damaged by the disease, according to a new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers.

"The findings are published in the Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. Although these are preliminary results, the findings increase the likelihood that endometrial tissue could be harvested from women with Parkinson's disease and used to re-grow brain areas that have been damaged by the disease, according to lead author Hugh S. Taylor, M.D., professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at Yale School of Medicine, and section chief of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at Yale School of Medicine.

"Because of their ability to divide into new cell types, stem cells could be the key to treating many different kinds of diseases, like Parkinson's, in which the body's own cells are damaged or depleted. Parkinson's is caused by a breakdown of dopamine-producing nerve cells in the brain stem. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that stimulates the motor neurons that in turn control muscles. When dopamine production is reduced, the nerves are not able to control movement or maintain coordination.

"In their study, Taylor and his colleagues collected and cultured endometrial tissue from nine women, and verified that they could be transformed into dopamine-producing nerve cells like those in the brain."

Michael J. Fox came to my state and spent $ millions on lobbying for embryonic stem cell research approval at the polls. The campaign was deceptive, never referring to the killing of human embryos for research, and it was expensive. It seems ironic that Fox's Parkinson's might some day be cured by non-embryonic stem cells instead. Admittedly, this advance is for women; perhaps it will be expanded somehow soon for men. I wish Fox well, and I hope for continued advances of this sort in all diseases. But there is still no news from the highly touted and extremely expensive embryonic stem cell quarter.

A Stem Cell Potpourri

The stem cell debate is apparently done and over with on the Left Coast. California has “quietly” stopped referring to embryonic stem cells when it reports progress, and now refers to the more generic term “stem cells”. In this guise it is able to claim the progress from adult and induced pluripotent stem cells in its releases, even though the $ billions of taxpayers dollars it spent went straight into embryonics. The problem is that embryonic stem cells produced nothing. Zero, zip, nada.

From Investors.com:

“Bioethics: Five years after a budget-busting $3 billion was allocated to embryonic stem cell research, there have been no cures, no therapies and little progress. So supporters are embracing research they once opposed.

“California's Proposition 71 was intended to create a $3 billion West Coast counterpart to the National Institutes of Health, empowered to go where the NIH could not — either because of federal policy or funding restraints on biomedical research centered on human embryonic stem cells.

“Supporters of the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, passed in 2004, held out hopes of imminent medical miracles that were being held up only by President Bush's policy of not allowing federal funding of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) beyond existing stem cell lines and which involved the destruction of embryos created for that purpose.

“Five years later, ESCR has failed to deliver and backers of Prop 71 are admitting failure. The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the state agency created to, as some have put it, restore science to its rightful place, is diverting funds from ESCR to research that has produced actual therapies and treatments: adult stem cell research. It not only has treated real people with real results; it also does not come with the moral baggage ESCR does.

“To us, this is a classic bait-and-switch, an attempt to snatch success from the jaws of failure and take credit for discoveries and advances achieved by research Prop. 71 supporters once cavalierly dismissed. We have noted how over the years that when funding was needed, the phrase "embryonic stem cells" was used. When actual progress was discussed, the word "embryonic" was dropped because ESCR never got out of the lab.”

There have, indeed, been many advances in NON-embryonic stem cell research, many of which I have recorded on this blog. Here are some more, just for the record.

At Northwestern University, new cartilage has been grown in animal joints using an injectable gel that automatically forms a lattice substrate, upon which stem cells which are already present in the bone marrow induce growth of new collagen: cartilage tissue.

At Clemson U., an injectable gel has been used to reverse brain damage, by exciting the activity of stem cells already present.

“In a follow-up study, Dr. Zhang loaded the gel with immature stem cells, as well as the chemicals they needed to develop into full-fledged adult brain cells. When rats with severe brain injuries were treated with this mixture for eight weeks, they showed signs of significant recovery.

“The new gel could treat patients at varying stages following injury, and is expected to be ready for testing in humans in about three years.”

And at Kyoto University:

” Last November, two teams of scientists turned ordinary adult skin cells into pluripotent stem cells—capable of becoming any kind of tissue—a feat that could solve the ethical problem forever. Here’s how one group did it.

“The scientists, led by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan, identified 24 genes that are active in embryonic stem cells but not in adult cells. They deposited combinations of the 24 genes into the DNA of adult mouse skin cells.

“They found that just four of the original 24 genes will turn adult cells into stem cells. The scientists aren’t quite sure what the genes do. They think two of the genes code for proteins that encourage further protein synthesis.

“The scientists repeated their experiment on human adult skin cells using the same four genes as in the mouse model. The human cells also turned into stem cells and then differentiated into brain and heart cells.”

UPDATE (2.10.10):
Here's another one. This one is from Stanford U, where pluripotency is acheived without the use of viral transport:

"It is the first example of reprogramming adult cells to pluripotency in this manner, and is hailed by the researchers as a major step toward the use of such cells in humans. They hope that the ease of the technique and its relative safety will smooth its way through the necessary FDA approval process.

"'This technique is not only safer, it's relatively simple,' said Stanford surgery professor Michael Longaker, MD, and co-author of the paper. 'It will be a relatively straightforward process for labs around the world to begin using this technique. We are moving toward clinically applicable regenerative medicine.'

"The Stanford researchers used the so-called minicircles - rings of DNA about one-half the size of those usually used to reprogram cell - to induce pluripotency in stem cells from human fat. Pluripotent cells can then be induced to become many different specialized cell types. Although the researchers plan to first use these cells to better understand - and perhaps one day treat-human heart disease, induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, are a starting point for research on many human diseases.

"'Imagine doing a fat or skin biopsy from a member of a family with heart problems, reprogramming the cells to pluripotency and then making cardiac cells to study in a laboratory dish,' said cardiologist Joseph Wu, MD, PhD. 'This would be much easier and less invasive than taking cell samples from a patient's heart.' Wu is the senior author of the research, which will be published online Feb. 7 in Nature Methods."

2009: A Single Bright Spot

There will be plenty of "top ten" analyses of the various aspects of the previous year in other venues. I choose to highlight what I feel is the singular most brilliant set of accomplishments in a very long time: the developmental progress of Adult Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, or iPS cells.

The progress in iPS cells has been nothing less than spectacular, in my opinion. And this progress has essentially side-lined the entire field of embryonic stem cells, which has not only ethical issues, it has severe technical issues which are not shared by Adult iPS cells. Embryonic stem cells might never overcome the potential for creating tumors, for example. One advantage of Adult iPS cells is that they can be taken from the patient's own body, eliminating the need to deal with rejection of mismatched tissue.

Not only have iPS cells been created from a number of different tissues from skin to bone, they have been made more efficiently during the last year. One of the last reports shows that vitamin C eases the conversion of adult cells to stem cells. Linus Pauling would be proud! Other reports show that the conversion process can be done in as little as one single step.

The upside of Adult iPS cells is wide open at this point. There is no way to predict the range of future uses. And so far there is little if any downside, certainly not the need for killing embryos or trafficking in such tissues.

I have documented the iPS cell progress that has come to my attention in the sideline category "stem cells". My congratulations to the iPS cell researchers, and in the words of a different blogger, "faster please"!

Man in 23 Year Coma Was Conscious All Along

The Mail On-Line reports that the man was evaluated several times and that his consciousness was declared “extinct”. Yet Dr Steven Laureys evaluated him again with new brain scan techniques and found him to be functional. He was given therapy – how wasted his muscles must have been! And he now converses by tapping on a computer screen, and he reads books with a special device that allows him to read from a horizontal position.

This leads one to wonder, if his condition can be found and localized, can stem cell therapy renew his injured system?

This is not the first time that a long term coma patient has returned to animation. The Mail On-Line cites another case, and I have heard of others, too.

Given this, why is it not murder to remove life-support from such patients? Do not injured people deserve care? At what point is their human-value less than the dollar-value of their care? And who is allowed the hubris to make that decision concerning another persons value?

iPS Stem Cells: Fat to Bone and Easier too.

The news of non-embryonic stem cell successes keeps rolling in, and I can’t help but celebrate each bit. The latest news is of a boy who was born without cheek bones, the structure that gives form to the face and protection and support to the eyes. He has been given new cheek bones using stem cells from his own fat. Bone was used to form a substrate or scaffold, and the stem cells form new bones grown on that.

And other developments include techniques that make iPS stem cells much easier to produce.

Researchers at Scripps Institute found three natural chemicals that allowed the efficiency to be increased by 200 times, and speed to be doubled, with the elapsed time decreased from 4 weeks to 2 weeks.

This technology is as interesting and exciting as semiconductor technology was in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s – and digital technology in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s - rapidly changing, advancing and enabling incredible new technologies to tumble out. If I were a youngster looking for a career, I think that stem cells would be it. The ultimate affect on humanity can only be guessed, but it will be as great as semiconductors / computers I suspect.

The latest news from embryonic stem cells? They are still discussing ethics. Nothing else of significance.

Adult Stem Cells From Fat Cells

The arguments for embryonic stem cell research are long gone. There are so many nails in that coffin that it should never rise again. There is no longer a bleating chorus of eugenicists claiming that opposition means denying cures to disease, or that fertilized embryos are not "persons", feel no pain, so it's OK to kill them for their contents.

Stem cells have been made from all sorts of adult human tissue. Advances in the creation of adult stem cells include making the process simpler and more efficient. The need for embryonic stem cells no longer exists (yet the research continues under government funding).

Now National Geographic reports that adult stem cells have been made from fat tissue that has been removed by liposuction: waste. (Recycling of such waste should get support from Greenies, one would think.) Every person has reservoirs of fat, even the six-pack body models that work for TV advertising.

According to Joseph Wu, senior author of the study, the fat cell conversion process is twice as fast and 20 times as efficient as the process for skin cell conversion. The fat cell conversion process involves using programmed viral introgression into the fat cells to reprogram the fat into "induced Pluripotent Stem Cells", (iPS).

The fat cell iPS process has the speed advantage that might be life saving in the future, allowing rapid growth of high volumes of new, compatible tissue for repair of failing organs.

Science is great!