Daily Archives: November 20, 2007

Embryonic Stem Cells From Adult Skin Cells

Scientists have been excited about the possibilities of embryonic stem cells at least since they were isolated in 1998. These cells are the root of the tree. We start as a handful of these cells and grow into a full individual. These cells can – and do – differentiate to become all parts of the body. If we could harness this capability, theoretically we could grow entire replacement organs. Or we could treat diseases like diabetes and heart disease noninvasively.

That’s been the hope. But in order for embryonic stem cells to help a particular patient, they need to be a match for that patient. Up until now, the only way to get a perfectly matching stem cell line was by cloning. First, a human egg was harvested painfully from a woman. Then the egg donor’s genetic material would be removed and the patient’s genetic material would be added. After the resulting embryo had divided a few times, stem cells could be harvested – killing the embryo.

If that sounds labor intensive, it is. If it sounds expensive, it is. If it sounds ethically questionable – well, you’re not alone in thinking that. Some question the destruction of the embryo; others see the potential of exploiting women for their eggs. For embryonic stem cells to move beyond the lab to produce therapies for patients, we needed a better way to produce embryonic stem cells. It looks like we got it:

Scientists have made ordinary human skin cells take on the chameleon-like powers of embryonic stem cells, a startling breakthrough that might someday deliver the medical payoffs of embryo cloning without the controversy.

Laboratory teams on two continents report success in a pair of landmark papers released Tuesday. It’s a neck-and-neck finish to a race that made headlines five months ago, when scientists announced that the feat had been accomplished in mice.

…

“People didn’t know it would be this easy,” Thomson said. “Thousands of labs in the United States can do this, basically tomorrow.”

And we need thousands of labs. We need the stem cell lines for research, and we also need for this method to be perfected. At present the method disrupts the skin-cell DNA too much to be safe. It is thought that as this procedure is refined, the risk of creating cancer instead of stem cells will be reduced.

Glenn Reynolds remarked that if this pans out, it will be the biggest story of the year. I think it will pan out. There’s essentially no chance that this could be hoax – as with Dr. Hwang back in 2005. This research was accomplished independently by teams on two continents. And since it can be easily reproduced, this is likely to become accepted science very soon.

But this probably won’t be the biggest story of this year. This is the sort of story that only excites those who understand the implication. It’s likely to be a bigger story in a few years when medical breakthroughs start disrupting medicine-as-usual. When that happens researchers can point back to this moment as the watershed – the point at which it all began.

More Thoughts on Human Augmentation

From Brian Wang, our guest on Sunday’s FastForward Radio. Additionally, Brian presents some other ideas about how we go about getting to the kind of future we’re looking for, including this analogy that he referenced on the show:

I think of the Tom Hanks character in Saving Private Ryan on the opening Omaha beach sequence. Some soldiers mistakenly believed it was better to hide behind the steel crosses on the beach or to not creatively attack the pill boxes that had them pinned down. I think of the difficult goals of getting space colonized in a major way or conquering diseases and making significant progress against age deterioration as pill boxes that have us pinned down on a dangerous beach. Just because the time has been stretched out to decades, centuries, millenia does not mean that we are not collectively on a dangerous beach. We can and should do a lot over the next 50 years and beyond.

Read the whole thing.

Cooking Cancer… With Bubbles!

An Oxford University team is developing a new cancer fighting technique that is noninvasive, does not use toxic chemicals, or radioactivity. It is called Hifu – High Intensity Focused Ultrasound.

This is the same principle behind burning leaves with a magnifying glass. But here, instead of focusing light, they are focusing ultrasound. When the ultrasound focuses, bubbles are generated within the body. When the bubbles pop, sufficient heat is released to kill surrounding cells – which, hopefully, are cancer cells.

But the existing Hifu technique has two important limitations compared with surgery that are hindering its clinical uptake. First, it is very slow: it takes up to five hours to treat a 10cm tumour, compared with the 45 minutes or so it takes a surgeon to cut the tissue out.

Secondly, clinicians are working in the dark: without invasive surgery, the results can only be assessed after the treatment is over.

Why not use an MRI to see exactly what you’re cooking… as you’re cooking it? Right now they are monitoring the progress of these treatments only by monitoring the temperature of the tissue and by sound. The have a sensor that actually hears the bubbles pop. Still, that doesn’t tell you what tissue the bubble killed.

[Oxford University researcher] Dr Coussios commented: “If we can use cavitation to accelerate the treatment, better localise the treatment – meaning that you will never get pre-focal damage – deliver the treatment at a lower frequency so you can go deeper in the body, and if we can also use these bubbles to monitor the treatment in real time, we have solved all the major limitations of Hifu in one go.”