ER docs and vampires take note: Scientists have figured out how to turn embryonic stem cells into human blood.
In a study published in the (aptly named) journal Blood last week, researchers at a company called Advanced Cell Technology tell how exposing developing stem cells to a combination of proteins coaxed them into becoming red blood cells. The process is not ready for prime time: It’s way too expensive for mass production, for one thing, and it’s also not clear that the blood produced with the current process would be transfusable. But the breakthrough — which could potentially eliminate the prospect of blood shortages (not to mention the unpleasantness of donating blood) — nevertheless represents a significant technical success in the beleaguered field of US stem cell research.
US researchers have largely been denied federal funding for embryonic stem cell research since President Bush’s 2001 executive order limited funding to existing stem cell lines. And though state and private funding have taken up some of the slack by bankrolling laboratory and animal research in the field, very few are willing to take the next risky step of funding clinical research (that is, research in human subjects).
Nobody knows that trouble better than Advanced Cell Technology, which despite its recent success with the blood study and others in the area of age-related macular degeneration, is just about broke. Its first-quarter report for 2008 included a financial warning indicating it would require additional cash from somewhere to keep operating. Perhaps the company will find it, or at least be able to hold on until a new president lifts the ban that is impeding medical advancement in the field.
Comments
Minerva Says:
August 25th, 2008 at 11:06 am
BFD. Embryonic stem cells from embryos are obsolete - ‘embryonic’ from skin is ‘the future of stem cell research’ according to the fathers of the embryonic branch of the discipline: Evans, Wilmut, Gearhart, & Thompson.
Even Advanced Cell is profiting from them, the Boston Business Journal recently reported that they “signed patent-licensing agreements with a subsidiary of life sciences researcher BioTime Inc.
The licensed technology covers methods to transform skin or other cells in the human body into cells with properties found throughout the human body. It is through Biotime’s subsidiary Embryome Sciences Inc.
The technology could theoretically eliminate the use of human embryos to develop potential stem cell treatments.”
Furthermore, in last week’s hysterically titled, “Fighting for the Right to Clone”, Discovery Magazine, Advanced Cell’s Dr. Lanza said, “We’re continuing this work, but with less urgency since the discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells—adult cells that have been reprogrammed back to an embryonic state. We’re working on new ways to reprogram skin cells that would allow us to safely create a bank of stem cell lines that would closely match the population as a whole. It turns out that only 100 cell lines could give you a complete haplotype, or immune, match for 50 percent of the U.S. population. These reprogrammed cells are not as controversial since you don’t use cloning or embryos.”
As for the blood thing - it’s already been reported it has zero chance of being cost-effective … so we’ll probably never know if it could be used in people.
As the first person to culture human embryonic stem cells said, “Embryonic stem cells are a cultural artifact” “a decade from now this will be just be a funny historical footnote.”
Oh - and the government spent about $1/2billion just on human embryonic stem cell research (or 20x what it spent on cord blood) during the Bush years. Yet, with 25+ years of working with them - no where in the world are they being used therapeutically in humans because they are too dangerous. Conversely, over 1000 studies using other stem cells are currently recruiting http://www.ClinicalTrials.gov
Whether it’s diseases like diabetes, or limb/organ regeneration, other stem cells are fulfilling the empty promises of embryonic, safely and with less patient trauma than surgical replacement postulated for potential use of embryonic.
That is why so many patient advocate groups are moving against directing resources away from embryonic and towards what actually works.
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