Stem cells without embryos

San Diego Union-Tribune:

A team of scientists led by Scripps Research Institute has pulled ahead in the race to develop embryonic-like stem cells that could be used for patient-specific therapies and models of disease, but that don't require destruction of an embryo.

The Scripps team, led by Sheng Ding, transformed fully formed fibroblast cells – precursors to skin cells – into primitive, embryonic-like stem cells without using any dangerous genes or viruses, a component that hampered previous research. The results appeared online yesterday in the scientific journal Cell Stem Cell.

Once they are embryonic-like, they can be coaxed into becoming many different cell types in the body, much the way human embryonic stem cells – the body's master cells – morph into the more than 200 types of cells in the body. This morphing ability is called pluripotency.

The hope for embryonic and embryonic-like stem cells is that they can be used to study the development and progression of diseases. Many people envision science harnessing the power of these pluripotent cells to create human tissue that can replace cells damaged by diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes.

Although such a therapy is years away, the work by Ding's team is a major improvement to a groundbreaking technique discovered three years ago by a Japanese team led by Shinya Yamanaka that inserted four genes into mature skin cells to convert them to an embryonic-like state.

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There is much more. I hope the Obama administration will not discriminate against these guys because they did not use human embryos. For some reason they seem to be hung up on a use that many find offensive.

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