Ask the average American about stem cell research and they will assure you that Bush banned stem cell research. The more thoughtful of them might say that Bush banned only embryonic stem cell research. Both are wrong of course: Bush only banned federally-funded fetal stem research for all but a limited number of stem cell lines. Fetal stem cell research is alive and well in the United States in the private sector and there are no limitations on what may be done.
Actually, my assertion that fetal stem cell research is alive and well is misleading. Fetal stem cell research is alive but ailing. Fetal stem research has been a big disappointment, with few successes and many failures.
Other stem cell research — from umbilical cord cells to stem cells obtained from fat — have enjoyed great success. From AFP:
It was the kind of breakthrough scientists had dreamed of for decades and its promise to help cure disease appears to be fast on the way to being realized.
Researchers in November announced they were able to turn the clock back on skin cells and transform them into stem cells, the mutable building blocks of organs and tissues.
Then just earlier this month a different team announced it had cured sickle cell anemia in mice using stem cells derived from adult mouse skin.
“This is truly the Holy Grail: To be able to take a few cells from a patient — say a cheek swab or few skin cells — and turn them into stem cells in the laboratory,” said Robert Lanza, a stem cell pioneer at Advanced Cell Technology.
“This work represents a tremendous scientific milestone - the biological equivalent of the Wright Brothers’ first airplane,” he told AFP.
“It’s bit like learning how to turn lead into gold.”
…
The new technique, while far from perfected, is so promising that the man who managed to clone the world’s first sheep, Dolly, is giving up his work cloning embryos to focus on studying stem cells derived from skin cells.
“The fact that (the) introduction of a small number of proteins into adult human cells could produce cells that are equivalent to embryo stem cells takes us into an entirely new era of stem cell biology,” said Ian Wilmut, the Scottish researcher who first created a viable clone by transferring a cell nucleus into a new embryo.
One of the greatest advantages of the new technique is its simplicity: it takes just four genes to turn the skin cell back into a stem cell.
This, unlike the complex and expensive process developed by Wilmut, can be done in a standard biological lab. And skin cells are much easier to harvest than embryos.
“It’s an explosion of resources,” said Konrad Hochedlinger, of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.
Prior to this discovery, researchers who wanted to look at how diseases developed would usually have to study animals or organs harvested from cadavers because embryonic stem cells were so hard to use and access.
But with stem cells derived from skin, tissues and organs can be grown in a petri dish, making it easier for researchers to map the genetic structure of diseased cells, a process which could unlock a cure.They could also allow researchers to do chemical screens to identify drugs which may cure or treat a disease, a process which could significantly speed up the process of bringing life-saving drugs to the market.
The use of skin cells will eventually allow doctors to create stem cells with a specific patient’s genetic code, eliminating the risk that the body would reject transplanted tissues or organs.
Researchers have already shown this is possible when they cured sickle cell anemia in mice.
They used skin cells taken from the tails of sick mice, transformed them into stem cells, manipulated those stem cells into healthy bone marrow cells and then transplanted them into the sick mice.
And since the new cells came from the sick mice, there was also no need for dangerous immunosuppressant drugs to prevent rejection.
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