Embryonic Stem Cell Breakthrough
In mice, Israeli scientists have apparently created a "miniature heart" using embryonic stem cells. If the story is right, the stem cells were morphed into the building blocks of heart cells, after which the scientists "found a way of persuading the different types of cell which form the heart to grow and work together. The result was a tiny piece of heart muscle--less than one centimetre square--but threaded with minute blood vessels and closely resembling the complex tissue of the human heart. While stem cells have been coaxed into heart tissue before, this is the first time scientists have succeeded in creating tissue that contains all the vital cells." This has yet to be done in human tissues and the issue of tissue rejection would still have to be contended with. But if this anecdotal report is verified, it is a major scientific achievement. (Remember, the ESCR/cloning debate is not a scientific controversy. It is a dispute over ethics.)
A similar achievement has been made with umbilical cord blood stem cells to make a miniature liver.
Labels: Embryonic Stem Cell Research
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 8:45 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
Wonder if it can be replicated with ASC? Of course, it one thing to make a small part of an organ but how to integrate it? It would seem that being able to add new tissue to a failing liver or pancreas would have great applications, but would adding new heart muscle cells actually "pump it up" - the pass/fail test of course having ultimate consequence
There are ongoing adult stem cell studies to treat human heart transplant-requiring patients in progress. Annecdotal reports about these studies have indicated that people who required heart transplants before receiving the ASC infusion, did not afterwards. This hasn't yet been peer reviewed, so it remains annecdotal--just like this ESCR story. If it is true, however, the ESCR in this arena might be rendered superfluous--at least as to therapeutic use.
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