This story is not exactly just-off-the-presses new, but it is new to me.
Cell find may cut use of human embryos
The number of human embryos needed for medical research could be greatly reduced following the announcement yesterday that doctors have found that testicular cells can turn into a wide range of other types found in the body.
[A] forthcoming study in the journal Nature will describe how a team in Germany, where [embryonic stem cell] research is forbidden, has successfully isolated highly flexible stem cells from adult mouse testes that exhibit properties similar to embryonic stem cells.
The Big News here is that the researchers worked their cell culture alchemy to coax the testicular cells into becoming each of the three basic forms of mammalian tissue – gut, muscle and nervous.
The team which reports the advance, led by Prof Gerd Hasenfuss of the Georg-August-University of Goettingen, show that the testis cells are remarkably flexible: capable of forming all three “germ layers” – the basic three cellular layers, ectoderm, endoderm, and mesoderm – from which the body’s organs and tissues develop.
[W]hen the cells were blended with those of an early mouse embryo, they were found to contribute to many tissues, such as heart, brain and spleen, in the mice that were born.
From those starting points you can make any tissue in the human body, on top of which other researchers have shown that stem cells injected into diseased tissue just seem to ‘know’ where to go and what to become in order to fix the problem.
As far as I am concerned this is an extremely cool development on several fronts. While I enthusiastically support work on embryos that IVF clinics discard on a daily basis, it seems like good policy to placate critics without any potential downside. As much as the protests get on my nerves I doubt that every one of them is doing it out of cynical political calculation. If this holds true for humans every male will potentially have his own ready supply of “multipotent” stem cells that cannot be rejected, although that potentially could be a problem for women.
Colleagues have expressed some skepticism (subscription wall), undoubtedly bearing in mind the career-ending ethics flame-out of South Korean Hwang Woo Suk:
Hasenfuss’s work has its sceptics, including Takashi Shinohara, a mouse germ-cell expert at Japan’s Kyoto University. Shinohara’s group was the first to isolate reprogrammable cells from mouse testes, but it used two-day-old pups (M. Kanatsu-Shinohara et al. Cell 119, 1001–1012; 2004). His experience differs from that of the Göttingen researchers in some ways — for example, they report that stem cells injected into embryos are able to integrate into various tissues. “Perhaps they have some different kind,” he says, “but I don’t think that type of cell exists.”
Shinohara also points out that many researchers have tried doing similar experiments, with more sophisticated culture media, without the same results. “It’s too good to be true,” he says. Kaomei Guan, of the Göttingen team, counters that simplicity may be the key. Applying a complicated mix of certain growth factors in a lab dish for a long period of time, he says, can cause other cells to take over and the sperm stem cells to die.
Will it work in humans? We don’t know, but they have already started testing (another subscription wall):
Other researchers are not as certain. Stephen Minger of King’s College London notes that the success “doesn’t necessarily mean it will also work in people.” But Hasenfuss is optimistic. “Right now, we are looking at [human] testicular biopsies and trying to adapt culturing conditions,” he says.
You would have to pay me a lot of money to volunteer for that.
The Other Steve
I think it’s fine to use stem cells.
Leave my testicular cells alone.
MN Politics Guru
I’d give my left nut for an advancement in stem cell research!
Zifnab
Why do I envision an horrible parallel to guys waking up in tubs of ice water with their kidneys missing?
RobertL
Obviously with other options foreclosed they are simply going after low hanging fruit.
The Sanity Inspector
I once saw a news article suggesting that teratomas might be usable in this type of research instead of fetal stem cells. I wonder if anything will ever come of that?
Jim Allen
Great ad campaign for the research institutes: “It takes balls to do stem cell research!”
Punchy
Confused. Shall I assume that only men will benefit from this research? After all, you cannot take testicular cells from man and place them in a woman without an immune response, right? Or do these cells lack the antigenic markers prior to specialization?
ppGaz
What if I’m incapacitated? My wife says she doesn’t want a decision about testicular cells hanging over her head.
canuckistani
Hooray! Another problem solved! The problem of all those abortions performed solely to get the stem cells.
tBone
She’s just going to have to deal with it. Sometimes scientific progress smacks you in the face.
ppGaz
Among other things! That’s what I keep telling her!
Tom in Texas
I don’t doubt that certain religions will still consider this murder. After all, masturbation is murder, isn’t it?
ppGaz
It is if you don’t have a private place to do it.
tBone
In which case, every guy here is a serial killer.
boinkie
One of the problems with stem cells is that after so many replications, they change…either get “old” or turn cancerous…
So if you use an embryo, you only have a small number of cells to get stem cells…and you need quite a few. So you grow them and whoops. Cancer.
Taking them from fat and bone marrow, you can get more…
The other problem with stem cells/embryo cells is that the DNA doesn’t match…even if you “clone”, the mitochondrial DNA doesn’t match…
BlogReeder
You’re obviously confused about ethical issues but this makes great fodder for amusing comments.
I thought we could get stem cells from bone marrow. Why is this team looking down there?
CaseyL
IIRC, researchers also found “highly flexible stem cells” in the uterine lining – but the research on that doesn’t seem to have gone anywhere, and I don’t know anything more about it.
tzs
CaseyL–yah, I saw that too. Something about being able to recover stem cells from uterine linings.
Even easier to collect: we females just gotta wait until “that time of the month.”
scs
My feelings that the stem cell fad is a little premature were confirmed by this recent NYT article. I think this may sound more promising. Some excerpts: