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Stem-cell research labs springing up by hundreds |
| Date Added: October 22, 2008 12:43:48 AM |
| Author: |
| Category: Research |
| Scientists now moving beyond embryonic sources in research By Jeremy Manier McClatchy News Service Published: Friday, October 17, 2008 12:16 PM EDT CHICAGO — Less than a year after a Wisconsin team helped discover a major alternative to human embryonic stem cells, the Madison scientists say more than 800 labs have begun using the approach, suggesting that many stem-cell researchers are starting to move beyond controversial embryonic sources for their work. Such shifts may reframe the emotionally fraught debate over stem cells, an issue that has ignited passions across the political spectrum. Both presidential candidates have indicated they would lift President Bush’s restrictions on funding for the research, though Sen. Barack Obama has been more adamant than Sen. John McCain. The biologist doing more than anyone else to stir the debate is University of Wisconsin researcher James Thomson, who co-discovered human embryonic stem cells a decade ago, in November 1998. Last year Thomson shook the field again when his lab and a Japanese team showed a way of genetically reprogramming adult skin cells to act like stem cells, including the ability to form any of the body’s tissues. Some groups that oppose destroying embryos for research have hailed the new cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells, as a way to eliminate the need for stem cell research based on embryonic material. In a rare extended interview, Thomson said he shares some of their qualms but believes the issue’s moral and scientific contours have never been more complex. Thomson still supports lifting Bush’s restrictions, he said, because no one knows whether the new iPS cells can match embryonic cells’ knack for growing into any kind of tissue — brain cells, heart muscle, insulin-producing cells and dozens of others — in mass quantities. Some scientists cite this potential in saying the true moral course is to accelerate research on embryonic cells, because it might produce transplant tissue for illnesses such as diabetes and Parkinson’s disease. But Thomson also says many arguments for expanded federal funding have exaggerated the field’s short-term promise. Perfecting such techniques could take many decades, he said. “It’s certainly going to happen, but it’s going to be hard, and people are not prepared for how hard it’s likely to be,” Thomson said. The most profound effect of stem cells in the meantime could be to screen new drugs for safety and to gauge a medication’s effectiveness on real human tissue without using patients as guinea pigs. “It simply means that for the very first time we have access to the human body in the lab,” Thomson said. “And for drug screening and drug discovery that’s going to make a huge difference. When you use one of those drugs you won’t know that human embryonic stem cells or iPS cells were involved. It won’t make the front pages at all.” He said he’s amazed at how quickly scientists have begun exploring the use of the reprogrammed skin cells he reported on last year. “People are jumping in very rapidly, much more rapidly than they did 10 years ago” following the initial discovery of embryonic stem cells, Thomson said. In all, 812 labs in dozens of countries have requested the materials needed to re-program ordinary cells into iPS cells, according to Addgene, a Massachusetts-based repository for the research supplies. By contrast, a half-dozen or so labs started working with embryonic stem cells in the months after his landmark 1998 paper, Thomson said. In recent months Thomson has been racing other labs to grow an improved form of iPS cells that potentially could be used in human patients. The original method probably could not be tested in people, because it relied on a retrovirus to activate a few genes that re-program the cells. |
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