Stem Cell/Cloning Issues

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New stem cell method doesn't harm embryos...

Lab Cites Stem Cell Advance
Friday, January 11, 2008 - Method of Harvest Could Leave Embryos Undamaged; Robert Lanza says stem cell research using his laboratory's harvest method should be eligible for public funding, even with President Bush's restrictions.

Scientists in Massachusetts said yesterday that they had created several colonies of human embryonic stem cells without harming the embryos from which they were derived, the latest in a series of advances that could speed development of stem-cell-based treatments for a variety of diseases. In June, scientists in Japan and Wisconsin said they had made cells very similar to embryonic stem cells from adult skin cells, without involving embryos. But that technique so far requires the use of gene-altered viruses that contaminate the cells and limit their biomedical potential. By contrast, the new work shows for the first time that healthy, normal embryonic stem cells can be cultivated directly from embryos without destroying them.

That means the work should be eligible for federal financing under President Bush's six-year-old policy of funding only stem cell research that does not harm embryos, said study leader Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester. But that is not likely, said Story Landis, who heads the National Institutes of Health Stem Cell Task Force, which oversees grants for studies on the medically promising cells.

The embryos Lanza used, which were donated for research, appear not to have been damaged, Landis acknowledged. However, she said, "it is impossible to know definitively" that the embryos were not in some subtle way harmed by the experiment. And "no harm" is the basis of the Bush policy, she said. Landis said the only way to prove that the technique does not harm embryos would be to transfer many of them to women's wombs and see whether the resulting babies were normal. But it would be unethical to do that experiment, she said, so the question cannot be answered.

That standard has Lanza fuming. By all scientifically recognized measures, he said, the embryos -- currently frozen in suspended animation because they were donated for research and not to make babies -- are normal, he said. "I think the burden of proof lies with the NIH and the Bush administration to show that an embryo was harmed," Lanza said.

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Using stem cells to prevent tissue rejection...

Patient grows new jaw from own stem cells
Fri., Feb. 1, 2008 - Man cultivated replacement tissues in own abdomen for nine months

Scientists in Finland said they had replaced a 65-year-old patient's upper jaw with a bone transplant cultivated from stem cells isolated from his own fatty tissue and grown inside his abdomen. Researchers said on Friday the breakthrough opened up new ways to treat severe tissue damage and made the prospect of custom-made living spare parts for humans a step closer to reality.

"There have been a couple of similar-sounding procedures before, but these didn't use the patient's own stem cells that were first cultured and expanded in laboratory and differentiated into bone tissue," said Riitta Suuronen of the Regea Institute of Regenerative Medicine, part of the University of Tampere. She told a news conference the patient was recovering more quickly than he would have if he had received a bone graft from his leg. "From the outside, nobody would be able to tell he has been through such a procedure," she said.

The team used no materials from animals, she added, preventing the risk of transmitting viruses than can be hidden in an animal's DNA, and followed European Union guidelines. Stem cells are the body's master cells, and they can be found throughout the blood and tissues. Researchers recently have found that fat contains stem cells, which can be directed to form a variety of different tissues. Using a patient's own stem cells provides a tailor-made transplant that the body should not reject.

More Patient grows new jaw from own stem cells - Cloning and stem cells - MSNBC.com

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Stem cell fix for broken bones...

Stem cell hope for bone fractures
Monday, 18 February 2008, UK scientists hope to mend shattered bones and damaged cartilage using a patient's own stem cells.

They are developing a "bioactive scaffold" to protect the stem cells and encourage them to grow into bone or cartilage when placed in the body. The Edinburgh University team hope the technique, which uses stem cells from blood and bone marrow, will be tested in patients within two years. Surgeons said it could help repair trauma injuries too severe to heal. "A lot of research that has gone before is working out what will drive them down the route to become a specific cell type" - Dr Brendon Noble

The £1.4m project could also eventually have an impact on treating conditions such as osteoarthritis. Dr Brendon Noble, who works in the University of Edinburgh's MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine said initially they would look at mending cartilage injuries which do not tend to heal well or bone fractures caused by severe trauma such as motorbike accidents. Elderly patients with fractures also tend to heal less well, he said.

'Recipe'

The key to success would be to get the "recipe" right for encouraging the stem cells to grow in what are effectively harsh environments, he explained. "A lot of research that has gone before is working out what will drive them down the route to become a specific cell type. "The next stage is trying to think of innovative ways to encourage them to do that in the body - often we can do things in the laboratory and that's easy but we tend to forget that the cells in the patient were not happy in the first place."

More BBC NEWS | Health | Stem cell hope for bone fractures

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Pope Benny don't want no cloning around...

Vatican Lists New Sin: DNA Manipulation
March 10, 2008 - Church Official Also Lists Drugs And Pollution As Sins With "Social Resonance"

Sinning has gone global, according to a Vatican official who has singled out genetic experiments, pollution and mind-damaging drugs as among today's new sins. Also receiving fresh attention by the Vatican are society's injustices, along the lines of the age-old maxim: "The rich get richer while the poor get poorer." After last year's "Ten Commandments" against road rage and other sins committed behind the wheel, the Vatican has provided its latest update on how God's law is being violated with modern means.

"The poor are always becoming poorer and the rich ever more rich, feeding unsustainable social injustice," Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti, the head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano in an interview published Sunday. Girotti was asked what, in his opinion, are the "new sins." He cited "violations of the basic rights of human nature" through genetic manipulation; drugs which "weaken the mind and cloud intelligence" as well as imbalances between rich and poor.

"If yesterday sin had a rather individualistic dimension, today it has a weight, a resonance, that's especially social, rather than individual," said the monsignor, whose office deals with matters of conscience and grants absolution. Vatican officials stressed that Girotti's comments broke no new ground on what constitutes sin.

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Genetic research decoding diseases...

Leaps in gene scan science help decode diseases
Sun., March. 30, 2008 - Progress in genetic research lets patients if they’re at risk for illness

Scientists are scanning human DNA with a precision and scope once unthinkable and rapidly finding genes linked to cancer, arthritis, diabetes and other diseases. It’s a payoff from a landmark achievement completed five years ago — the identification of all the building blocks in the human DNA. Follow-up research and leaps in DNA-scanning technology have opened the door to a flood of new reports about genetic links to disease.

On a single day in February, for example, three separate research groups reported finding several genetic variants tied to the risk of getting prostate cancer. And over the past year or so, scientists have reported similar results for conditions ranging from heart attack to multiple sclerosis to gallstones. The list even includes restless legs syndrome, a twitching condition best known as “jimmy legs” in an episode of “Seinfeld.”

In all, since 2005, studies with the gene-scanning technique have linked nearly 100 DNA variants to as many as 40 common diseases and traits. “There have been few, if any, similar bursts of discovery in the history of medical research,” two Harvard researchers declared last summer in the New England Journal of Medicine.

More Leaps in gene scan science help decode diseases - More health news - MSNBC.com

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Half-man/half-cow hybrid???...

British scientists make human-cow embryos
Wed., April. 2, 2008 WASHINGTON - Experts assure public such experiments wouldn't result in ‘monsters’

British researchers say they have created embryos and stem cells using human cells and the egg cells of cows, but said such experiments would not lead to hybrid human-animal babies, or even to direct medical therapies. Dr. Lyle Armstrong of Newcastle University presented preliminary data on his work to Israel's parliament last week. It has not been reviewed by other experts in the field, Newcastle University said in a statement released on Tuesday.

They said they had hollowed out the egg cells of cattle, inserted human DNA to create a growing embryo, and then taken it apart to get embryonic stem cells. Other experts agreed such work would only be an interim step aimed at understanding the biology of embryonic stem cells — the body's ultimate master cells, which can give rise to all of the other cells and tissues.

"If the team can produce cells which will survive in culture it will open the door to a better understanding of disease processes without having to use precious human eggs. Cells grown using animal eggs cannot be used to treat patients on safety grounds but they will help bring nearer the day when new stem cell therapies are available," John Burn, Head of the Institute of Human Genetics at Newcastle University, said in a statement.

More Scientists make human-cow embryos - Cloning and stem cells - MSNBC.com

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Adult stem cell breakthrough...

First In Adult Stem Cell Research - Heart Derived Cells Develop Into Heart Muscle
Wednesday, April 23, 2008 : Dutch researchers at University Medical Center Utrecht and the Hubrecht Institute have succeeded in growing large numbers of stem cells from adult human hearts into new heart muscle cells.

Prior to this, it was necessary to use embryonic stem cells. Their findings are published in the latest issue of the journal Stem Cell Research. The stem cells are derived from material left over from open-heart operations. Researchers at UMC Utrecht used a simple method to isolate the stem cells from this material and reproduce them in the laboratory, which they then allowed to develop. The cells grew into fully developed heart muscle cells that contract rhythmically, respond to electrical activity, and react to adrenaline. “We’ve got complete control of this process, and that’s unique,” says principal investigator Prof. Pieter Doevendans. “We’re able to make heart muscle cells in unprecedented quantities, and on top of it they’re all the same. This is good news in terms of treatment, as well as for scientific research and testing of potentially new drugs.”

Doevendans will use the cultured heart muscle cells to study things like cardiac arrhythmia (abnormal heart rhythms). Stem cells from the hearts of patients with genetic heart defects can be grown into heart muscle cells in the lab. Researchers can then study the cells responsible for the condition straight away. They can also be used to test new medicines. This could mean that research into genetic heart conditions can move forward at a much faster pace. In the future, new heart muscle cells can likely be used to repair heart tissue damaged during a heart attack.

For some time now, it has been known that the heart is a source of stem cells. Although in the past researchers from other countries have succeeded in using these cells to make heart muscle cells, this always required the presence of heart muscle cells from newborn mice or rats in the growth medium. The stem cells discovered by the UMC Utrecht researchers are able to develop on their own. Heart muscle cells can also be made from embryonic stem cells. The disadvantage of this method is that the yield is low, because not all cells develop into muscle cells. Also, the ethical considerations of isolating stem cells from embryos are the subject of controversy.

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Genetic repair of eyesight...

Gene therapy experiments improve vision in nearly blind
Sunday, April 27, 2008 -- Scientists for the first time have used gene therapy to dramatically improve sight in people with a rare form of blindness, a development experts called a major advance for the experimental technique.

Some vision was restored in four of the six young people who got the treatment, teams of researchers in the United States and Britain reported Sunday. Two of the volunteers who could only see hand motions were able to read a few lines of an eye chart within weeks. "It's a phenomenal breakthrough," said Stephen Rose, chief research officer of the Foundation Fighting Blindness, which helped pay for one study done at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

If successful in larger numbers, experts said, the technique has the potential to reverse blindness from other kinds of inherited eye diseases. "I think this is incredibly exciting," said Dr. Jean Bennett, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania and a leader of the Philadelphia study. "It's the beginning of a whole new phase of studies."

The research was published online Sunday by the New England Journal of Medicine in conjunction with presentations at a medical meeting in Florida. The two teams of scientists, working separately, each tested gene replacement therapy in three patients with a form of a rare hereditary eye disease called Leber's congenital amaurosis. There's no treatment for the disease, which appears early in infancy and causes severe vision loss, especially at night.

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Lasik worries? Some may see better with alternatives
28 Apr.`08 WASHINGTON - Frightened by headlines about Lasik side effects? Lasik gets all the advertising, but there are half a dozen alternate eye surgeries — from a simpler laser approach to implantable lenses — that might solve your squint.

They all have their own risks. A key is finding a surgeon who doesn't have a favorite but is qualified to evaluate patients for all of the options, to find the best fit. Topping the list is a pre-Lasik laser that's making a comeback thanks to precision-improving computer software. It goes by two names: Surface ablation, or wavefront-guided PRK, which stands for photorefractive keratectomy. What's most important is that it doesn't require cutting a flap into the cornea, the eye's clear covering, like Lasik does, a cut widely considered that procedure's riskiest step.

"There's a lot of us that are doing more and more surface ablation and much less Lasik," says cornea specialist Dr. Craig Fowler of the University of North Carolina. PRK accounts for about 15 percent of the roughly 700,000 laser vision correction surgeries performed each year, up from 5 percent during Lasik's peak in popularity earlier this decade, says David Harmon of Market Scope, which tracks the industry. Other Lasik alternatives have virtually no advertising and attract far fewer patients.

Tragic testimony before the Food and Drug Administration last week reinforced warnings that Lasik does come with risks: lost vision, painful dry eye, glare and other night-vision problems. Serious complications appear rare, affecting 1 percent or fewer cases, and the FDA estimates 5 percent of patients aren't satisfied with the outcome. But aggressive marketing makes patients falsely believe clear sight is guaranteed, complained Dr. Jayne Weiss of Detroit's Kresge Eye Institute, who chaired the FDA advisory panel. "Lasik is not a commodity. It's a surgical procedure, but it is being sold as a commodity," she told the meeting.

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Calif. on the cutting edge...

California promotes researches on stem cells
May 7,`08 -- The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) awarded 12 academic and non-profit institutions on Wednesday with funds worth 271 million dollars to promote researches on human embryonic stem cells.

The institutions will use the grants to build research facilities throughout the state. "This will go a long way toward medical research that could save lives and improve them for people with chronic diseases," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said. "But also, this kind of public-private investment in a growing jobs sector is exactly the kind of good news our economy needs right now."

The largest grant went to Stanford University, which received 43.6 million dollars. The San Diego Consortium for Regenerative Medicine received 43 million. The other three major recipients are the University of California in Irvine (UCI), the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). USC officials said the money would go toward a five-story laboratory building.

"The new center at USC will be an important addition to our campus as we create new research space for discoveries that will eventually translate to patient care," said Dr. Carmen Puliafito, dean of the Keck School of Medicine at USC. UCLA officials said the money will help fund research labs and career-development space for clinical faculty.

"This will enable us to further add to our growing and already successful stem cell research program," said Dr. Owen Witte, director of the Elie and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA. "The new facilities are adjacent to biology, chemistry, engineering, medicine and clinical/transitional research programs, providing an opportunity for the kind of innovative, cross-disciplinary research that UCLA does so well."

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Now they gonna be makin' pig-people in England...

Human-pig hybrid embryos given go ahead
01/07/2008 : A licence to create human-pig embryos to study heart disease has been issued by the fertility watchdog.

This marks the third animal-human hybrid embryo licence to be issued by Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the first since the Commons voted in favour of this controversial research last month. An HFEA spokesman said it had approved an application from the Clinical Sciences Research Institute, University of Warwick, for the creation of hybrid embryos. The centre has been offered a 12 month licence with effect from today, July 1. The effort at the University of Warwick is led by Professor Justin St John. "This new license allows us to attempt to make human pig clones to produce embryonic stem cells," he said, where embryonic stem cells are able to turn into the 200 plus types in the body.

"We will take skin cells from patients who have a mutation for certain kinds of heart disease (cardiomyopathy, which makes the heart lose its pumping strength) and put them into pig eggs after their chromosomes have been removed. We will then make embryos so that we can attempt to derive embryonic stem cells which will allow us to study some of the molecular mechanisms associated with these heart diseases. "Ultimately they will help us to understand where some of the problems associated with these diseases arise and they could also provide models for the pharmaceutical industry to test new drugs. We will effectively be creating and studying these diseases in a dish.

"But it's important to say that we're at the very early stages of this research and it will take a considerable amount of time. There is still a great deal to learn about these techniques and much of our early work will involve understanding how we can make the hybrid cloning process as efficient as possible." The study is aimed at understanding the way power-producing structures in cells, called mitochondria, are passed from egg to embryo. In the hybrid, the mitochondria mostly come from the egg, initially making up around half of the DNA by weight, and the team will do experiments in order to ensure that the trace of human mitochondrial DNA takes over, not least because it is designed to work with human nuclear DNA.

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