I'm going to go out on a limb and say that we all love stem cells in this class. The use of these controversial little buggers could have an exponential effect on medicine. However, there is a great deal of politics
surrounding the topic, which is why we're talking about them in this class. Some scientists have found a way around the stem cell controversy though. I am going to call myself a science nerd, because I subscribe to Scientific American, in which I read an article that about using stem cells without the controversy. It was called "Diseases in a Dish" (this is only the preview to the article). The concept was first used in an attempt to find drugs for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease). First, they use a punch biopsy to get skin cells from patients with ALS. Next, they insert regulatory genes into fibroblast cells from the skin's connective tissue. Programmed by the foreign genes, the fibroblast becomes induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) . These cells clump together to form embryoid bodies. The scientists add a catalyst for cell division and retinoic acid, which directs the development of the embryoid body into a motor nueron. Because the new cells were derived from a patient with ALS, they exhibit similar characteristics and can be used to test chemical compounds when developing new drugs. This method was developed by Japanese biologist Shinya Yakamanaka. Other approaches have been taken with the "disease in a dish" concept; however, the iPS method has proved most effective. Increasingly, more and more stem cell researchers have pursued the ""disease in a dish" concept. The original study was published in 2008, and since a group of researchers from the Harvard Stem Cell Institute has used the iPS technique with cells from people with juvenile diabetes and Parkinson's, as well as other disorders. For many, this approach to stem cells is more moral than the use of embryonic stem cells, because these cells are easily taken from adults.
There’s a certain irony to the fact that politics pushed embryonic stem cell research out of the labs for a decade, and forced scientists to discover alternatives that have proven to be better than the embryonic lines. This is a cool article that demonstrates an interesting use of iPS. Recently, an ALS patient was treated with adult stem cell therapy, and walked a 2.5 mile fundraiser a year later.
ReplyDelete