Stem Cell Research Advance

[elte]

I just heard about a fascinating and seemingly almost counter intuitive development in stem cell research. Normal cells have been coaxed to revert back to stem cells in relatively large numbers without using problematic viral methods. This type of approach might also overcome the problems with trying to obtain stem cells from embryos or other external sources. Here is the link to the audio story which explains it better than I can.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/201...s-mouse-blood-into-brain-heart-and-stem-cells

 

[exchemist]

I just heard about a fascinating and seemingly almost counter intuitive development in stem cell research. Normal cells have been coaxed to revert back to stem cells in relatively large numbers without using problematic viral methods. This type of approach might also overcome the problems with trying to obtain stem cells from embryos or other external sources. Here is the link to the audio story which explains it better than I can.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/201...s-mouse-blood-into-brain-heart-and-stem-cells

Thanks, sounds interesting. I'll listen to it when I have a little more time (it's tax return season in the UK so I'm a bit behind with things).

 

[elte]

Thanks, sounds interesting. I'll listen to it when I have a little more time (it's tax return season in the UK so I'm a bit behind with things).

You're welcome; good luck on those taxes, and enjoy the audio clip. I can relate to taxes causing things to get delayed.

 

[Aqueous Id]

I just heard about a fascinating and seemingly almost counter intuitive development in stem cell research. Normal cells have been coaxed to revert back to stem cells in relatively large numbers without using problematic viral methods. This type of approach might also overcome the problems with trying to obtain stem cells from embryos or other external sources. Here is the link to the audio story which explains it better than I can.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/201...s-mouse-blood-into-brain-heart-and-stem-cells

Hi elte. Long time no see.

I was glad to see you opened this thread. I caught the story when it broke and was bowled over. It blew my mind that something so simple escaped detection for so many decades.

The idea is that some day in the future a patient will be able to donate some mature cells, the lab will grow them into stem cells in a few days or so, and then the patient will get an injection at the site of a damaged organ, and the organ will recover some of its function.

A sidenote: the normal mature cell, when exposed to limited irritation (mild pH change) reacts as if there is a tissue injury, reconfigures itself as a stem cell and thereby enables itself to "become" a new constituent of the damaged tissue (i.e, a different tissue!) to shore it up and keep it functioning.

It's no wonder that so many medical authorities are stunned by this. Isn't it great? Let's hope it all pans out.

 

[Masticate3xAday]

The mechanical method they use to create STAPs is intriguing. If pushing cells simply though a pipette stimulates them to change their genome that much and reprograms to become stem cells, how much of all of our science is wrong? You constantly read about cell biology never being able to be reproducible, well maybe this is one reason why. Everyone uses pipettes to transfer cells. Cells are also trypsinized, spun down, vortex, you name it. I wonder if all of that mechanical stress is now able to reprogram at least small populations of cells within any experiment. The implications for science are both amazing and frightening at the same time.

 

[Aqueous Id]

The mechanical method they use to create STAPs is intriguing. If pushing cells simply though a pipette stimulates them to change their genome that much and reprograms to become stem cells, how much of all of our science is wrong? You constantly read about cell biology never being able to be reproducible, well maybe this is one reason why. Everyone uses pipettes to transfer cells. Cells are also trypsinized, spun down, vortex, you name it. I wonder if all of that mechanical stress is now able to reprogram at least small populations of cells within any experiment. The implications for science are both amazing and frightening at the same time.

Hey there. Evidently the nature of the stress is part of this discovery. Whether chemical or mechanical, or some combination, this fact alone almost seems to outweigh the enormity of the end result. And that accounts for some of the reactions, like "shocking" and "alchemy".

Although I can't date it for sure, I think there was some inkling perhaps 30 years ago or so that mature cells are naturally coaxed into stem cells during trauma . . . so in a way it seems like the very thing you're describing would have been part of a systematic investigation long ago.

BTW I did watch the PBS interview with one of the investigators and there was a surreal moment when he said something similar to what you just said. (I'll see if I can find it.) He said that in past cases where researchers thought they were inducing stem cell formation by their own processes, it now appears that some of that has to be attributed to them unwittingly introducing (this thing that appears to be in vitro stress). And if that's the case, then the consequences on past results of all kinds of studies would seem to be earth shattering.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

The new discovery is a method of producing stem cells by simply dipping blood cells into acid.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25917270

This advance is quite amazing.
If it works with human cells, it will revolutionise medicine.
It turns stem cell production into kitchen chemistry.
The cells produced are plenipotent, previously the hardest to obtain except from embryos.
Embryonic stem cells have the problem of tissue rejection.
With this technology, a person's own cells could be used.

 

[elte]

Hi elte. Long time no see.

I was glad to see you opened this thread. I caught the story when it broke and was bowled over. It blew my mind that something so simple escaped detection for so many decades.

The idea is that some day in the future a patient will be able to donate some mature cells, the lab will grow them into stem cells in a few days or so, and then the patient will get an injection at the site of a damaged organ, and the organ will recover some of its function.

A sidenote: the normal mature cell, when exposed to limited irritation (mild pH change) reacts as if there is a tissue injury, reconfigures itself as a stem cell and thereby enables itself to "become" a new constituent of the damaged tissue (i.e, a different tissue!) to shore it up and keep it functioning.

It's no wonder that so many medical authorities are stunned by this. Isn't it great? Let's hope it all pans out.

Hi Aqueous Id, thank you for the warm welcome and considerate positive feedback!

That is the type of thing I am hoping for also, and I wonder if it might be able to go even further eventually, where cells can be removed from the body, reverted back to stem cells, and then checked with some type of sorting process to find ones with the most youthful vitality, and then returned to the body as part of an overall rejuvenation process.

I think stem cells have really great therapeutic potential versus disease or even aging! I recall how it reminds the researchers of how an injured area has this stress process going on where remaining cells revert back to stem cells to heal the injury. Maybe we will be closing in on doing something similar to how salamanders can regrow missing limbs, but hopefully in our case be able to do it in a controlled way. (I seem to recall that hydrogen sulfide [or was it hydrogen peroxide?] was found in unusual quantities at the site of salamander limb regeneration. I wonder if it that somehow was the way the salamander maintained a stressful environment to keep the process going.)

 

[wellwisher]

If acid causes stem cells to form, does the opposite apply, that is does basic solution causes reversal back to differentiation? Blood is slightly basic and when the unborn hooks up with the blood supply, the stem cells see higher pH.

What is also interesting about this, it proves one does not need genetics to control genetics. This experiment is mediated through water where pH is actually expressed. An acid does not release the hydrogen proton unless there is water. The acids changes the global water and therefore changes the equilibrium configuration and activity of the DNA.

 

[exchemist]

Hi Aqueous Id, thank you for the warm welcome and considerate positive feedback!

That is the type of thing I am hoping for also, and I wonder if it might be able to go even further eventually, where cells can be removed from the body, reverted back to stem cells, and then checked with some type of sorting process to find ones with the most youthful vitality, and then returned to the body as part of an overall rejuvenation process.

I think stem cells have really great therapeutic potential versus disease or even aging! I recall how it reminds the researchers of how an injured area has this stress process going on where remaining cells revert back to stem cells to heal the injury. Maybe we will be closing in on doing something similar to how salamanders can regrow missing limbs, but hopefully in our case be able to do it in a controlled way. (I seem to recall that hydrogen sulfide [or was it hydrogen peroxide?] was found in unusual quantities at the site of salamander limb regeneration. I wonder if it that somehow was the way the salamander maintained a stressful environment to keep the process going.)

Yes I've read it now too: extraordinary that something so simple as altering the pH slightly can have this dramatic effect. Someone will need to do some work to find out why it works, of course. But meanwhile I imagine there is no reason not to try this with human blood cells and see what happens.

 

[wellwisher]

Over the years, I have been talking about the importance of water to life, with pH a phenomena that is native to water. This shows how water is a global variable that can be used to tweak global variables like genetic differentiation and activity. Water consideration is why the theory of evolution is incomplete. Water adds cause and effect to the random assumptions currently needed to ignore water. Water adds direction and milestones. New discoveries will open minds.

 

[exchemist]

Over the years, I have been talking about the importance of water to life, with pH a phenomena that is native to water. This shows how water is a global variable that can be used to tweak global variables like genetic differentiation and activity. Water consideration is why the theory of evolution is incomplete. Water adds cause and effect to the random assumptions currently needed to ignore water. Water adds direction and milestones. New discoveries will open minds.

Yes, you have, haven't you?

But what you say here makes no sense. It is not a revelation that most biochemistry takes place in a aqueous environment, you know. Obviously pH is one of the factors determining the nature of any aqueous environment. This research shows nothing about water, just about pH.

 

[elte]

Yes I've read it now too: extraordinary that something so simple as altering the pH slightly can have this dramatic effect. Someone will need to do some work to find out why it works, of course. But meanwhile I imagine there is no reason not to try this with human blood cells and see what happens.

That is a good idea to try it on human blood cells. Small quick advances are a good way to make progress that builds.

 

[Aqueous Id]

Hi Aqueous Id, thank you for the warm welcome and considerate positive feedback!

My pleasure, elte. I'm still ga-ga over this several days after the story broke.

That is the type of thing I am hoping for also, and I wonder if it might be able to go even further eventually, where cells can be removed from the body, reverted back to stem cells, and then checked with some type of sorting process to find ones with the most youthful vitality, and then returned to the body as part of an overall rejuvenation process.

Someday people may actually wonder how their ancestors ever got anything done with a peak life expectancy of 80-90 yrs. or so.

I think stem cells have really great therapeutic potential versus disease or even aging!

A lot of the hardship of aging could be mitigated simply by offering a fast, cheap and noninvasive way to repair disease and damage. There are so many implications for this. Upon restoring a diseased pancreas, for example, diabetes could be cured. I thought of it in connection with the slow death of organs and extremities it causes - stem cells could potentially save some of those organs, and the pancreas itself might be repaired. As for aging, imagine how great it would be to get a cheap and fast stem-cell injection to restore the health of all the organs and tissues.

I recall how it reminds the researchers of how an injured area has this stress process going on where remaining cells revert back to stem cells to heal the injury.

Some of the things that come to mind are the ways blood cells cause coagulation at the site of a wound, or how the immune system triggers the production of antibodies. And consider how blood is infused with the leukocytes which are the daughter cells of stem cells in the bone marrow. If anything this might part of the connection.

Maybe we will be closing in on doing something similar to how salamanders can regrow missing limbs, but hopefully in our case be able to do it in a controlled way. (I seem to recall that hydrogen sulfide [or was it hydrogen peroxide?] was found in unusual quantities at the site of salamander limb regeneration. I wonder if it that somehow was the way the salamander maintained a stressful environment to keep the process going.)

I know that the acid similar to Vitamin A (retinoic acid) - named for its role in the retina - regulates the gene expression during limb regeneration in some animals. Here's an example from the primitive salamander axolotl. Other animals that come to mind are certain flatworms and starfishes. During embryonic development, it's mainly hormones that influence gene expression. Nature seems to have come up the acid-mitigated system as a Plan B to the hormonal approach, since limb regeneration skips some of the early steps in embryonic development.

This also got me to thinking about the reason that amphibians ever succeeded -- that this was apparently a critical step leading to the evolution of all land animals - they needed those limbs to survive on land, yet they would have been tempting to predators while flailing around in the water.

 

[elte]

My pleasure, elte. I'm still ga-ga over this several days after the story broke.

Thank you Aqueous Id. I think that there are similar important things about epigenetics that we will hopefully discover soon too.

Someday people may actually wonder how their ancestors ever got anything done with a peak life expectancy of 80-90 yrs. or so.

A lot of the hardship of aging could be mitigated simply by offering a fast, cheap and noninvasive way to repair disease and damage. There are so many implications for this. Upon restoring a diseased pancreas, for example, diabetes could be cured. I thought of it in connection with the slow death of organs and extremities it causes - stem cells could potentially save some of those organs, and the pancreas itself might be repaired. As for aging, imagine how great it would be to get a cheap and fast stem-cell injection to restore the health of all the organs and tissues.

There are a lot of people out there who have learned so much who could contribute much more freely, more like how young people often tend to do. Being enfeebled from diabetes or congestive heart failure wouldn't any longer have to be something to consume so much time and effort. It would provide a dividend for human productivity.

Some of the things that come to mind are the ways blood cells cause coagulation at the site of a wound, or how the immune system triggers the production of antibodies. And consider how blood is infused with the leukocytes which are the daughter cells of stem cells in the bone marrow. If anything this might part of the connection.

That is a good possibility how the leukocytes could play an important role. I think the environment of the cells is an important part of how the stem cells carry on. I recall how stem cells even produce chemicals that affect normal cells around them.

I know that the acid similar to Vitamin A (retinoic acid) - named for its role in the retina - regulates the gene expression during limb regeneration in some animals. Here's an example from the primitive salamander axolotl. Other animals that come to mind are certain flatworms and starfishes. During embryonic development, it's mainly hormones that influence gene expression. Nature seems to have come up the acid-mitigated system as a Plan B to the hormonal approach, since limb regeneration skips some of the early steps in embryonic development.

I like that deductive reasoning!

This also got me to thinking about the reason that amphibians ever succeeded -- that this was apparently a critical step leading to the evolution of all land animals - they needed those limbs to survive on land, yet they would have been tempting to predators while flailing around in the water.

I think that is a good explanation for the how the regeneration process could have come about as a form of adaptation!

 

[Captain Kremmen]

If acid causes stem cells to form, does the opposite apply, that is does basic solution causes reversal back to differentiation?

It's more likely that a low pH would do the same thing, if anything at all.
The pH is subjecting the cells to stress.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

This is the person who did the research.

Haruko Obokata
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...-turn-human-skin-into-stem-cells-9117102.html

You didn't expect that now, did you?

She is older than she looks. About 30 to 31.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruko_Obokata
The youngest Nobel Prize winner was William Bragg aged 25 in 1918 (Physics).
She might become the youngest winner in Medicine and Physiology.
The current youngest was Frederick Grant Banting, aged 32 in 1923. He got the joint prize for discovering insulin.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1923/index.html

 

[elte]

From the link Captain Kremmen posted to the Independent article.

He believed this was the body's natural repair mechanism, when damaged adult cells revert to an embryonic state which we call "stem cells". His initial studies, published more than 10 years ago, were met with ridicule. On one occasion, Dr Vacanti was heckled at a scientific conference. "People said we were nuts. They said it was heresy, that we should withdraw our scientific papers," Dr Vacanti said.

However, Dr Obokata's painstaking research, now published in the journal Nature after unusually severe scrutiny by peer reviewers, appears to have proved Dr Vacanti right. Making embryonic stem cells from human skin or blood could not be any easier.​

I'm glad they didn't give up after the hard time they got. Think of all the people who didn't have the wherewithal to continue on. Who knows what humanity has lost.

This is the person who did the research.

Haruko Obokata
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...-turn-human-skin-into-stem-cells-9117102.html

You didn't expect that now, did you?

She is older than she looks. About 30 to 31.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haruko_Obokata
The youngest Nobel Prize winner was William Bragg aged 25 in 1918 (Physics).
She might become the youngest winner in Medicine and Physiology.
The current youngest was Frederick Grant Banting, aged 32 in 1923. He got the joint prize for discovering insulin.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1923/index.html

Thanks Cap'n!

 

[Walter L. Wagner]

yes, i'm surprised it took so long. that bit about heckling really bothers me.

we've known for quite some time that many organisms can regrow limbs, etc. and so the ability to form stem cells had to be present. lizards that drop tails, then regrow them, etc.

apparently, all it took was for someone to try different methods, and presto, they found one.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

Human skin cells have been turned into stem cells which have the potential to develop into fully-formed embryos, simply by bathing them in weak citric acid for half an hour, a leading scientist has told The Independent on Sunday.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...-turn-human-skin-into-stem-cells-9117102.html

Now that you can grow your own stem cells with a twist of lemon and some skin,
what need is there for research into stem cell production?
A lot of current research might as well be binned.

Yes, this will lead to new research, but you can understand why some people might be a little upset.

Nature weren't originally so receptive to the research:

It’s not surprising that Ms. Obokata simply wants the public to focus on her scientific achievements, after years of setbacks. Other experts were initially skeptical. Nature rejected the team’s paper when it was first submitted in April 2012.
“They responded to me that the paper made a mockery of the 100 years of cell biology,” she told reporters. “There were countless times I cried all night.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2014/02/03/a-breakthrough-for-science-and-young-japanese-women/