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You are here: Home / Science & Technology / Stem Cells And Cancer

Stem Cells And Cancer

by Tim F|  February 21, 200611:29 am| 16 Comments

This post is in: Science & Technology

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One thing that people should take away from our ongoing coverage of the stem cell issue is the amazing degree to which every other field of medicine potentially stands to gain from progress in stem cell research (more here). Today’s NY Times again underlines the point with a story looking at how stem cells may explain the way that many forms of cancer frustratingly resist treatment:

One day, perhaps in the distant future, stem cells may help repair diseased tissues. But there is a far more pressing reason to study them: stem cells are the source of at least some, and perhaps all, cancers.

At the heart of every tumor, some researchers believe, lie a handful of aberrant stem cells that maintain the malignant tissue.

The idea, if right, could explain why tumors often regenerate even after being almost destroyed by anticancer drugs. It also points to a different strategy for developing anticancer drugs, suggesting they should be selected for lethality to cancer stem cells and not, as at present, for their ability to kill just any cells and shrink tumors.

Chalk up cancer patients as another group who stands to get shafted when our government lets its rightmost fringe dictate science policy.

***Update***

Hoist on his own petard! Am I committing a logical fallacy by claiming that cancer paitents are affected by a federal policy which excludes embryonic stem cells (ESCs) from federal research money (actually, the policy restricts federal funds to a dwindling batch of subpar ESC lines)? Techinically, yes. Naughty me. That said, the first answer is that the restriction on federal funds means a lot. State and local funds amount to a hill of beans, and private funding (e.g., Merck) means that the data may well not be shared and could get patented and sat on by the company for decades while they, and they alone, work on commercializing a therapy. Federal funds specifically mandate that research gets shared with the public, ensuring that all of the private sector will have the opportunity to freely compete and a potential therapy has a better chance of reaching the market sooner.

Second, the question of adult versus embryonic stem cells. I think that we can learn quite a lot about cancer from studying stem cells derived from adults. Therapies, however, will very likely require something more flexible. I can easily imagine a treatment that halts cancer growth by specifically weeding the stem cells out of an adult’s body, which would leave an extremely unhealthy adult. Physicians would then have the problem of replacing the lost stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are a vastly better choice for this because you can replace stem cells all over the body from a single pool. The alternative would be separately growing brain, epithelial, bone marrow and every other type of semi-differentiated stem cell and injecting them individually. Again, this is hypothetical but it illustrates why we limit ourselves by dictating which stem cells we can and cannot work on.

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Previous Post: « The Miracle/Plague of Modern Technology
Next Post: The War on Evolution »

Reader Interactions

16Comments

  1. 1.

    Bill

    February 21, 2006 at 12:07 pm

    Wouldn’t the cancer-causing stem cells be adult stem cells? The administration allows research on adult stem cells.

    Arrgh. I hate to be an administration apologist, but it’s important to keep the record clear.

  2. 2.

    Zifnab

    February 21, 2006 at 12:26 pm

    I don’t know. Isn’t that like saying, “You can study the chicken but not the egg”? The general rhetoric – regardless of the nitty gritty policy – is that stem cells == 3vil! Which, I believe, is at the heart of the debate.

    Still, I think you’re right. Studying cord cells from the umbilical cord and adult stem cells are legal avenues of research. But there’s a great deal of question as to how much information can be garnered from such a limited scope. If we can’t study embryonic stem cells, we can’t even tell you the differences between the two. One is left questioning whether adult stem cells are a viable path of research when we aren’t even allowed to research the question.

  3. 3.

    Jeff R

    February 21, 2006 at 1:26 pm

    Uh, there’s no ban on stem cell research. Scientists just don’t get free federal dollars to study it.

    California or Merck can still throw all the money at it that they want.

  4. 4.

    Pooh

    February 21, 2006 at 1:31 pm

    To get federal funding for stem cells, all you’d have to do would be advance the hypothesis (“theory” if you will. It’s all just theory, don’t you know.) that embryonic stem cells conclusively demonstrate that the earth is 6,000 years old. Humans and Dinosaurs living together, mass hysteria.

  5. 5.

    DougJ

    February 21, 2006 at 1:47 pm

    Sorry, Tim, but there’s no sound science to support any of this. Let’s wait until the science is clear before we commit ourselves to something that may be both immoral and ineffective.

    And how come no one is working on switch grass stem cells? That’s the kind of technology that could reduce our reliance on foreign oil by 75% by 2020.

  6. 6.

    DougJ

    February 21, 2006 at 1:48 pm

    Harry Reid has a half native American baby. She likes to play with Clinton’s and McCain’s half black children.

  7. 7.

    DougJ

    February 21, 2006 at 1:51 pm

    Sorry — meant to post that in the other thread.

  8. 8.

    OCSteve

    February 21, 2006 at 2:12 pm

    Seeing as we’re playing “spot the fallacy” today:

    Chalk up cancer patients as another group who stands to get shafted when our government lets its rightmost fringe dictate science policy.

    Tsk. Tsk. fallacy of exclusion – Your implication is that the government has somehow squashed stem cell research. All they have done is cut federal funding of embryonic stem cells, limiting the funding to existing lines.

    With that said, I agree with you 100%. Fallacy and all.

  9. 9.

    DougJ

    February 21, 2006 at 2:59 pm

    You’re really a moron sometimes, OCSteve. And this is one of the those times.

  10. 10.

    Mark Wilson

    February 21, 2006 at 3:02 pm

    Completely irrational post, born of ignorance. Cancer stem cell research has no cognizable relationship to embryonic stem cell research.

  11. 11.

    OCSteve

    February 21, 2006 at 3:03 pm

    TimF Re: Update

    Well said. I actually agree with both your original post and your update.

    I was just busting your stones because you jumped on me over my Greenwald post (well, my fallacies) back a few threads (since responded too) :)

  12. 12.

    OCSteve

    February 21, 2006 at 3:05 pm

    You’re really a moron sometimes, OCSteve. And this is one of the those times.

    From the inimitable DougJ I’ll take that as high praise. I’m outta this thread now while I’m ahead.

  13. 13.

    DougJ

    February 21, 2006 at 3:06 pm

    Okay, OC, you’re okay this time.

  14. 14.

    Tim F.

    February 21, 2006 at 3:15 pm

    OCSteve,

    Understood. I was especially happy to see that my harping on fallacies hasn’t fallen on deaf ears. I’ll look to that other thread in a bit…

  15. 15.

    demimondian

    February 21, 2006 at 7:53 pm

    I was under the impression that there had been a set of interesting papers in _Cell_ middle of last year describing pluripotent adult stem cells in rats?

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    March 21, 2006 at 2:10 pm

    […] Lest I be hoist on my own petard (again), I understand that I’m falling into a composition trap by labeling a prominent blogger like Duncan as representing of “the left.” In one sense he does when you take into account the basically democratic nature of blog traffic. If Duncan doesn’t represent “the left” it’s only because other people in “the left” disagree with him. Count me in. […]

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