More Progress on Cell Reversion
Scientists continue to make headway on the goal of reverting adult cells back to an embryonic stem cell state. From the story:Their procedure makes ordinary skin cells behave like stem cells. If the same can be done with human cells - a big if - the procedure could lead to breakthrough medical treatments without the contentious ethical and political debates surrounding the use of embryos.
This work is still in mice, and as a scientist makes clear in the story, there is still a very long way to go. But if this works, if the benefits touted for embryonic stem cells are found to be obtainable from ordinary skin cells--credit President George W. Bush's ESCR federal funding policy, which created an incentive for scientists to find alternatives to ESCR.
Labels: Alternatives to ESCR
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 10:25 AM
10 Comments
10 Comments:
This posted on the front page of MSNBC.com
Again, it is easier to convince me camels can actually go through the eye of needle than to convince me of a media bias in favor of ESCR.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19067616/
Royale, look! There's a whole train of camels going through the eye of needle right now at the MSM.
Now we can go back to throwing the embryos in the garbage rather than using them for research.
Now we don't have to buy it when supposedly objective scientists tell us they need funding to make embryos for them to destroy.
BMMG39 couldn't post on blogger for some reason. He or she (as the case may be) asked me to post this comment:
""Royale, wait until the next time there's a story on Congress and embryonic stem cell research. This advancement will either be given a footnote at the bottom or will be omitted entirely. The media have bent over backwards so far to ignore the dozens of diseases already being treated using adult stem cells that it's absurd to pretend they haven't."
OK, I'd be happy to wager money on the media remembering this story the next time Congress discusses funding on ESCR.
Wesley, I don't understand the technology well enough to know the answer to these questions, could you help?
1. Is the thought that Cell Reversion will revert a cell into a stem cell or into a single cell embryo that could in-theory be implanted?
2. If the answer to #1 is "embryo" is there any reason for us to consider it materially different than a naturally conceived or for that matter cloned embryo?
The real term is cell regression, not reversion. The cell that results from the process is a stem cell, not an embyro.
Stem cells are immature cells that have not differentiated. So the regression process, if it works, would take a differentiated skin cell and regress it to an undifferentiated stem cell, which could then be differentiated again, in theory, to the type of cells needed for therapies.
From my understanding, they can then use the stem cell to make a gamete (sperm/ovum), which could then be used in fertilization, thus creating an embryo.
But to go from the stem cell to an embryo...I haven't heard that one yet.
Ken & Royale-I don't know whether or not it could be regressed back to a "totipotent" (I think that's the word) state where it would become a new human entity, but that scenario was being discussed in some groups and hence those groups were nervous about some of the provisions others were supporting. I'm guessing that's where you picked it up Ken.
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