Posted on 05/01/2002 12:29:17 PM PDT by toast
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists said Tuesday they had transformed ordinary human skin cells into immune cells in an experiment that, if it can be repeated, might bypass the need for either stem cells or highly controversial cloning technology for many medical therapies.
The team at biotech start-up Nucleotech LLC hope to be able to offer patients grow-your-own transplants that could theoretically be used to treat diseases such as immune deficiencies and juvenile diabetes.
Many teams are working on the idea, but nearly all had assumed the need for stem cells, the body's master cells, which are elusive and difficult to grow in the lab. They can be found in blood and tissue, or can be taken from embryos -- usually obtained from fertility clinics.
Such stem cells could also theoretically be made using cloning technology -- something highly controversial and the subject of competing legislation in Congress. President Bush supports a complete ban on the use of cloning technology involving humans.
A coalition of senators introduced a new bill Tuesday that would specifically allow the use of cloning technology in medical research but ban it for the purposes of making a baby.
James Robl, Philippe Collas and colleagues at Nucleotech and the University of Oslo believe they have found a way around the controversy.
By punching holes in mature skin cells and soaking them in a solution made from immune system cells, they said, they turned them into what look like T-cells -- key immune system cells.
``They start acting like T-cells,'' Collas told Reuters.
Robl, a leading stem-cell researcher who left the academic world to work for biotechnology companies, wants to use the approach to transform medicine.
``It would be a one-day procedure, in principle,'' he said. ''The patient would come in and give a skin biopsy to the lab to reprogram and the day after you could put the cells back into the patient.''
Researchers working with stem cells have had a similar idea for treating diabetes by making pancreatic cells, for treating Parkinson's or Alzheimer's by making new brain cells and for treating spinal cord injuries by making new nerve cells.
IMMEDIATE APPLICATIONS IN CANCER
Making T-cells could have immediate applications in treating cancer, said Collas, who led the study. A patient's skin cells could be transformed into T-cells that would recognize and attack the patient's own tumor.
The company was also looking at making pancreatic islet cells -- the cells that make insulin and which are destroyed in juvenile or type-I diabetes, Robl added.
Writing in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the team said they made the skin cells permeable by punching tiny pores in the cell walls. They then grew them in a solution containing extracts from T-cells.
The new cells stopped expressing the genes that skin cells express -- meaning they stopped functioning like skin cells, and instead turned on genes usually active only in immune cells, such as IL2, IL7, CD3, CD4 and RANTES.
``In effect you are washing regulatory factors out from inside the cell and replacing them,'' Robl said.
Instead of harnessing an early stem cell whose genes have not yet been all turned on, the team completely changed the cell's environment and thus changed the cell's function.
Although Robl hopes the technology will rival stem-cell and cloning approaches, both he and Collas oppose restriction of any kind on such research.
Dr. Irving Weissman of Stanford University, a supporter of cloning and stem-cell research, said he had not seen the study but added, ``I would be highly skeptical.''
Others agreed with Robl that all techniques need to be explored. ``There is so much that we don't know,'' Donald Coffey, a specialist in cancer and molecular biology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said in an interview. ``I say let all flowers bloom.''
In a commentary in Nature Biotechnology, Azim Surani and Patrick Western of Cambridge University in Britain said it looked to them as if the cells had only been partially reprogrammed but said Collas had come up with a ``potentially powerful system'' for studying cell biology.
The Conscious Knowledge Curve is increasing it's level of knowledge...
The Conscious Knowledge Curve rate of learning is speeding up...
We cannot find the answers without research.
Great to hear since I'll probably be working till age 70!
The President got this one right, although I had my doubts at the time. Some have been sacrificed already, and can never take their place among us, but we can learn from them. But we do not need to continue to destroy these beginning individuals just to let some grad students play god.
If someone has a valid research proposal requiring embryonic stem cells, then use the existing cell lines, as current policy provides. But stories like this make that seem less and less necessary. NO embryonic stem cell product has ever cured anybody of anything.
Bad idea. Ya see, when the call for reparations for clone-slaves comes hundreds of years from now, sadly you'll still be alive and your gonna get taken to the cleaners!
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