S. Korea opens stem cell bank

Research brings hope of curing brain disease


Ian Sample, science correspondent
Monday June 18, 2007
The Guardian

Scientists have developed a revolutionary new treatment for neurological diseases that uses an injection to tweak the way genes work in the brain.

The research raises hopes for a new era of effective treatments for some of the most debilitating - and so far incurable - brain conditions, including cancer and Alzheimer's disease.

Tests of the therapy at Harvard Medical School in Boston found that a simple injection was able to cure mice of a potentially fatal brain disease. The researchers behind the breakthrough are planning further tests and expect to conduct human trials within five years.

The team used a powerful new technique called RNA interference to silence faulty genes or viruses that cause brain diseases. The principle of gene silencing is simple: scientists build tiny strands of the genetic material called RNA which, when injected into cells, latch on to problematic genes and smother them, effectively shutting them down.

Until now, attempts to use gene silencing to treat brain diseases have been severely hampered for two reasons. First, many drugs injected into the body are barred from getting into the brain by a membrane that protects it from dangerous viruses and microbes in the bloodstream. Because of this, most gene-silencing treatments require injections directly into the brain - a second serious drawback because it involves a dangerous surgical procedure and only delivers the treatment to the cells at the end of the needle.

The Harvard team, led by Manjunath Swamy, found a simple way around these problems. They made strands of therapeutic RNA in the lab and mixed them with a tiny part of the rabies virus which helps it get into the brain and infect cells. The key-like fragment is harmless on its own.

The researchers squirted some of the mixture on to a dish of nerve cells and found that the strands of RNA they had created were smuggled inside the cells, where they shut down certain genes.

Next, the team tested the therapy on mice that had been infected with a fatal brain disease, viral encephalitis. The scientists found that regular injections of RNA mixed with the rabies virus fragment shut down genes in around half of the cells in the animals' brains and stopped the disease from spreading. Of the mice that received injections, 80% were cured, while all of the mice that were untreated died, the team report in Nature.

"We expect this work to move quite fast now, because there is so much interest in this kind of treatment. Potentially, it could be used for a wide variety of neurodegenerative diseases, but also for controlling cancers that spread to the brain," said Professor Swamy.

Therapies based on RNA interference have become the next great hope for medicine, and a large number are either in or about to start early clinical trials in humans. The technique earned its discoverers, the US researchers Andrew Fire and Craig Mello, the Nobel prize in medicine or physiology last year.
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Hmmm. Perhaps a way to cure Parkinsons without shredding babies. Who'd a thunk it?
 
U.S. company says grows embryo-safe stem cells

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor Fri Jun 22, 3:29 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers at a U.S. company trying to push the margins of stem cell research said on Friday they had grown human embryonic stem cells using a non-controversial method that did not harm the embryos.


They said they had grown several lines, or batches, of the cells using a single cell taken from an embryo, which they then froze unharmed.

"We generated three new lines," Dr. Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology Inc. told Reuters.

"These are first human embryonic cell lines in existence that didn't result from the destruction of an embryo."

Lanza gave a brief summary of the work to a meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research in Cairns, Australia this week. He plans to publish details in a medical journal.

ACT hopes the approach might bypass objections to human embryonic stem cell research. U.S. President George W. Bush vetoed a bill this week that would have broadened federal funding of such work.

Researchers say these cells, taken from days-old embryos, might provide a way to regenerate all sorts of tissues, blood and perhaps even organs. And studying them might help them learn how to reprogram ordinary cells.

Some countries, such as Britain, encourage this work. But opponents such as Bush say it is immoral to destroy a human embryo.

Last year, Lanza's team reported they had derived stem cells from a human embryo by taking just one cell at a time.

In theory, this would be the same as is done already in some fertility clinics when parents get embryos tested for genetic defects so they can conceive children free of diseases such as cystic fibrosis.

HEALTHY BABIES

This method, called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis or PGD, has been shown to be safe, with healthy babies born after it is performed.

But Lanza said he did not want to waste any embryos, so he in fact used more than one cell from the embryo for his experiment last year, destroying the embryo. Critics of human embryo research denounced his work.

This time, his team used just a single cell from each of three embryos and then froze the embryos. "These embryos remain frozen. They are still alive," Lanza said.

One contains a genetic defect that will doom it, called trisomy 16. "Those embryos can never go past the first trimester. Even if the embryo were implanted it could not give rise to a viable child," Lanza added.

"If that is not going to satisfy them, I don't know what is going to."

"Despite the veto, and particularly in light of this new advance, we call on the National Institutes of Health to reflect the will of the American people and approve funding for research applications of our single cell blastomere technology," William Caldwell Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ACT, said in a statement.

Now Lanza hopes to team up with other researchers who have found alternative sources of embryonic-like stem cells to compare the methods.

They include former colleague Dr. Anthony Atala, now of Wake Forest University in North Carolina, who has discovered embryonic-like stem cells in the amniotic fluid that surrounds fetuses in the womb.

And he says his team has also found a way to produce red blood cells from human embryonic stem cells, perhaps offering a way to some day produce large quantities of human blood for transfusions and other uses. That work also has yet to be published.
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looks like someone's got embryo all over their face.
 
Scientists: Stem cells created from eggs

By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer Thu Jun 28, 8:07 AM ET

NEW YORK - Scientists say they've created embryonic stem cells by stimulating unfertilized eggs, a significant step toward producing transplant tissue that's genetically matched to women.



The advance suggests that someday, a woman who wants a transplant to treat a condition like diabetes or a spinal cord injury could provide eggs to a lab, which in turn could create tissue that her body wouldn't reject.

Ethicists disagreed on whether the strategy would avoid the long-standing ethical objections to creating embryonic stem cells by other means.

Such cells can develop into virtually any tissue of the body, and scientists hope to harness them for producing specialized tissues like nerve cells or pancreas cells to treat a range of illnesses. But the process of harvesting the stem cells destroys embryos, which many people oppose.

To create tissues that genetically match a patient, some scientists are trying to develop a process called therapeutic cloning, in which DNA from the patient is inserted into an unfertilized egg, an embryo is produced and stem cells are harvested. But nobody has made that work in humans.

The new work tries another tack: stimulating a woman's unfertilized egg to begin embryonic development. Scientists believe this development can't continue long enough to produce a baby, but as the new work shows, it can produce stem cells that are genetically matched to the egg donor.

Such an approach could not provide matched cells for men, of course.

The work, published online by the journal Cloning and Stem Cells, is reported by scientists from Lifeline Cell Technology of Walkersville, Md., and from Moscow.

Jeffrey Janus, president of Lifeline and an author of the study, noted that stem cells produced by the method might prove useful for patients other than the egg donor, in combination with anti-rejection therapy. That's the case with standard stem cell lines created from ordinary embryos, he said.

He and colleagues report producing six lines of embryonic stem cells, one of which had chromosome abnormalities. They obtained their eggs from five women who were having eggs harvested for test-tube fertilization, and who agreed to donate some for the research.

"It's a big deal, it's a very nice advance," said Kent Vrana of Pennsylvania State University, who has done similar work in monkeys. The process appears efficient, he said, and it provides "an additional tool" beyond therapeutic cloning.

George Daley, a scientist at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, called the work interesting.

"It's a new type of embryonic stem cell line from a different kind of embryo," he said. "We just don't know whether these cells will be as good as embryonic stem cells from naturally fertilized embryos."

One question, he said, is whether the lack of a father's DNA contribution would impair the performance of the stem cells. DNA in sperm carries particular markers that differ from those found on DNA in an egg, and these markers affect the activity of specific genes.

Ronald M. Green, a Dartmouth College ethicist, said he believes the egg-stimulation process will prove an ethically acceptable way to create stem cells.

"People will see that these are activated eggs ... they do not of themselves ever develop into a human being," he said. "This is not anything biologically or morally like a human embryo, and it's a very good way of trying to provide human embryonic stem cells that does not involve the destruction of an embryo."

But the Rev. Tad Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia disagreed.

"My view is that if these grow as organized embryos for the first few days and then arrest, they may just be very short-lived human beings," he said.

"One is very possibly dealing with a defective human being. And at a minimum, the benefit of the doubt should be given here, and these embryos should not be created for the purposes of destroying them."
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Again??


Source
 
University: Stem-cell study used falsified data

Wed Oct 8, 1:59 AM ET

MINNEAPOLIS - The University of Minnesota has concluded that falsified data were used in a 2001 article published by one of its researchers on adult stem cells. The school is asking that the article be retracted.


The conclusion follows an 18-month investigation into research published by stem-cell expert Dr. Catherine Verfaillie. The investigation clears Verfaillie of misconduct but points to a former graduate student, Dr. Morayma Reyes, who is now an assistant professor at the University of Washington.

The university blames Verfaillie for "inadequate training and oversight," and says it has asked for a retraction of the published article, which appeared in the journal Blood.

Reyes said it was an honest error and there was no intent to deceive.

The study was one of a series that Verfaillie published, suggesting that adult stem cells could be used as an alternative to embryonic stem cells in medical research.

Her research received international attention because of political and ethical controversies over research involving embryonic stem cells. A panel of experts concluded that four images used in the Blood paper were intentionally altered, according to Tim Mulcahy, the university's vice president of research.

Verfaillie, who now lives in Belgium, could not be reached for comment, the Star Tribune reported.

Reyes, who responded to questions by e-mail, said the correction in the journal Blood is warranted. However, she denied falsifying data.

She said the university panel said she falsified data by adjusting brightness and contrast in scientific images included in the article. At the time the research was done, that was an accepted practice but it has since changed, she said. The panel judged her on the newer standard.

Reyes said the errors occurred because of "inexperience, poor training and lack of clear standards" on the handling of digital images. "I regret very much these errors and never had the intention to deceive," she said.

But Reyes also said they in no way altered the conclusions of the paper, and the research has since been successfully reproduced by other scientists.

Mulcahy said it's not clear how, or if, the discovery will affect the underlying findings of the research. "That's an issue that ultimately the scientific community will have to resolve for itself," he said.
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Falsified data ... but no intent to deceive?
 
No falsified. The images were brightened for clarity's sake - something not considered 'a bad thing' at the time.

Since the rules changed, it's now considered falsifying...but she didn't just do it now, but 7 years ago. :shrug:
 
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