Stem cells mimic genetic faults in incurable diseases
Posted Aug 10, 2008 by Paul Wallis (Wanderlaugh) in Health
Scientists have re-created the defective genes causing diseases like
Parkinsons and muscular dystrophy in living cells. Ordinary cells
from patients were used to duplicate the genetic faults. This is a
major breakthrough for researchers.
The Daily Telegraph:
"Researchers have long wanted to find a way to move a patient's
disease into the test tube, to develop cells that could be cultured
into the many tissues relevant to diseases of the blood, the brain
and the heart, for example," said investigator George Daley. (Dr.
George Daley, from Children's Hospital Boston)
"Now, we have a way to do just that, to derive pluripotent cells from
patients with disease, which means the cells can make any tissue and
can grow forever.
"This enables us to model thousands of conditions using classical
cell culture techniques."
"Pluripotent" means stem cells. The problem for years has been that
these genetic diseases have had to be tested in mice, and some of the
genes just don't behave the same way in mice:
Such cells reproduce human illnesses more faithfully than those taken
from animals such as mice.
Although the genetic differences between the two are small in some
diseases, such as Down's Syndrome, the genetic fault does not trigger
the same reaction in mice as in humans.
The creation of cell cultures is very important, too, because, as the
summary by Daley in Cell Magazine says:
Tissue culture of immortal cell strains from diseased patients is an
invaluable resource for medical research but is largely limited to
tumor cell lines or transformed derivatives of native tissues….. Such
disease-specific stem cells offer an unprecedented opportunity to
recapitulate both normal and pathologic human tissue formation in
vitro, thereby enabling disease investigation and drug development.
Meaning, literally, "We've isolated the little bastards, we finally
have an unlimited supply, and now we can really study the genes, one
at a time."
Which is exactly what they'll have to do. The genetics of these
diseases need to be picked apart, quite literally, and that could
have taken centuries or millennia of lab time, without a good supply
of materials.
You can expect to hear a lot more about research derived from this
work. You can also expect to see the culturing idea and technique
used widely, because this culturing approach takes a lot of the pain
out of the problem of access to materials.
The lack of materials has been for decades if not centuries a
limiting factor on the amount of actual research it's possible to do.
These days, so much research is being done that the demand is
gigantic. That limit is now history, and good riddance.
Daley's team have now solved that problem. Using real human cells
makes the work much more efficient. That'll make for some very happy
mice, at least, and a decent cost base for researchers.
This is a very big logistic achievement for medical research, a
first. I hope this invaluable addition to medical research will be
recognized for being as useful as it really is.
http://www.digitalj
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StemCells subscribers may also be interested in these sites:
Children's Neurobiological Solutions
http://www.CNSfoundation.org/
Cord Blood Registry
http://www.CordBlood.com/at.cgi?a=150123
The CNS Healing Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CNS_Healing
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