Embryonic Stem Cells
purepedantry | February 20, 2009As scientists await Obama reauthorizing federal funding of embryonic stem cell research and the FDA approves the first clinical trials using embryonic stem cell treatments, there is an important case report that highlights the potential safety issues with putting stem cells in humans.
Amariglio et al. report a case in PLoS Medicine of a boy treated by spinal injections of fetal-derived stem cells for a developmental disorder called ataxia telangiectasia. Four years after treatment, the boy developed brain tumors.
From the abstract:
A boy with ataxia telangiectasia (AT) was treated with…
purepedantry | March 19, 2008I was struck by this story on NPR about so-called "stem cell tourists." Stem cell tourists are parents taking their children to China for injections of stem cells in hopes of curing a wide variety of diseases. I want to convey at least in some small way what an insanely bad idea this is:
Jena Teague and her husband Terry Williams are among these new visitors. They traveled to China to seek stem-cell treatment for their blind, 7-month-old baby daughter, Laylah. She was born with optic nerve hypoplasia, or ONH -- when the optic nerves fail to develop properly in the womb. Conventional…
purepedantry | January 9, 2008Keeping with my attempt to actually do book reviews, I have the first of what will hopefully be a continuing series. I am reviewing Stem Cell Century by UCLA Law Professor and Volokh Conspiracy contributor Russell Korobkin -- with Stephen Munzer in some chapters.
This book examines the legal, ethical and policy-related issues in stem cell research. Stem cells as a technology are nearly universally acknowledged as possessing huge potential to improve human life and limit human suffering; however, in many cases this potential has not yet been realized. Further, the legal and ethical…
purepedantry | January 9, 2007Evidence has been found for the stem cell theory of cancer development. For those of you not aware of this theory, it holds that cancers originate from cells that have inadequately differentiated from their stem cell origins. This would contrast with more standard theories of cancer development that have cells de-differentiating from a more mature state.
Evidence for this theory has been fleeting, but researchers at USC may be on to something. Laird and colleagues, publishing in Nature Genetics, look at the DNA methylation state of certain genes in colorectal tumors in comparison to normal…
purepedantry | October 31, 2006In August, there was a big press tizzy about so-called ethical stem cells. In the paper, a group headed by Robert Lanza working at a company called Advanced Cell Technology claimed that they could take a single cell from a human morula and create a embryonic stem cell line from that cell. Admittedly, this was an exceptional scientific advance, but there were some serious caveats. First, the story was kind of hyped in the sense that the paper didn't actually show that you could do this without killing the embryo, they merely implied that it was possible. Second, I had some serious…
purepedantry | August 23, 2006The press is all in a tizzy about so-called ethical stem cells, but this still indicates a really limited understanding of how embryonic stem (ES) cells work. (Frankly, if I had a dollar for every time I read bad reporting on ES cells, you and I would not be talking. I would be Tahiti...with Natalie Portman.)
Anyway, in an article published in advance online in Nature, Klimanskaya et al. show that single cells derived from preimplanation genetic diagnosis (PGD) can be used to grow new stem cell lines.
Some background:
People go to in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics for a variety of…