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In one sense it has been too long between log entries but, in another sense not long enough since, during the delay (occasioned by a vacation, among other things) “almost daily” scientific discoveries have been demonstrated once more in the field of ethical (non-embryonic human) stem cell research.

As I noted in my last entry, even researchers engaged in destructive embryonic stem cell, contrary to what has been widely reported by most of the media, recognized that they were destroying human life in their work. One example, as recounted by Justin Cardinal Rigali, was when “a very influential (embryonic) stem cell researcher, Kyoto University’s Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, was humbled when he was looking through a microscope at a human embryo in a fertility clinic” Rigali quoted a New York Times story which reported: “The glimpse changed his scientific career. ‘ When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters,’ said Dr. Yamanaka, 45, father of two. ‘I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must another way.’”  He went on to find a way to do just that.

Last November, in a breakthrough report, the very same Dr. Shinya Yamanaka reported that he had been able to take skin cells from a 38 year old woman and grow them in his lab. Nothing new about that. But then, using an ingenious but basically trial and error process, his lab identified four human genes (Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4, C-Myc.) that produced cellular growth factors. In order to get these growth factor genes into the growing human skin cells, Yamanaka’s lab first put them in a special type of virus, called a lentivirus, and then infected, or as they reported “transfected” them into the skin cells they were growing. They kept an eye on the skin cells and noted that about one in several thousand “transfected” skin cells developed virtually all of the characteristics of human embryonic stem cells! Although one in several thousand may not seem very impressive to you or me, they were able to isolate and grow millions of the special cells— all they would need for research.

The same day that Dr. Yamanaka reported his results, Dr. James Thompson of the University of Wisconsin, and also one of the originators of destructive embryonic human stem cell research, reported a similar way to develop these iPSC, using a set of four growth factor genes, two of which were different from Yamanaka’s (Oct3/4, Sox2, NANOG, LIN 28).

These new cells appeared to meet all the qualifications to be ethical (they were, remember, not taken from a human embryo but from mature skin cells) and pluripotent (being capable of differentiating into virtually all types of cells). The cells, which Yamanaka called “induced Pluripotent Stem Cells” (iPSC), also had a new advantage. Since they could be taken from not only healthy individuals but also from patients suffering with, say Rheumatoid Arthritis, the iPSC may contain the same intracellular flaw(s) that caused the arthritis. When that’s the case, these cells, taken from an affected patient may be used to test the effectiveness of new medicines or combinations of medicines in the laboratory—without exposing that patient to the risks of trying out the new drugs themselves!

Although the scientific world was thunderstruck by Yamanaka’s and Thompson’s work, press reports were somewhat muted. Remember, it was the press that had pushed the agenda of destructive embryonic human stem cell research, either ignoring or simply pushing aside moral and ethical objections to the lethal nature of that work, even though the researchers were, as noted above, keenly aware of its destructive nature. It was the press, along with some researchers trying to get the public to pay for research that the free market would not, that pushed legislation in several states to publicly fund cloning human beings and then killing them for their stem cells. However none other than Sir Ian Wilmut, who devised many of the techniques of cloning and cloned Dolly the sheep, recognized what many in the press found hard to swallow, much less report. Sir Ian, almost immediately after Dr. Yamanaka’s paper on iPSC, went public with his determination to abandon his work on human cloning and use the new techniques instead.

I had meant this to be the last in this series of blog entries on human stem cell research but enough has happened since last November’s announcement of iPSC that it appears one more entry is needed to point out some of what has been learned since then and to report how the 2003 prediction of ethical researcher Dr. David Prentice is being fulfilled right now, just five years later.

Remember, if you have a topic you’d like me to address, just send me an email at drbob@superhealthms.com.