Stricter standards sought to curb stem-cell confusion

Nature News ^ | 23 July 2013 | Helen Shen

[neverdem]

Initiative aims to clarify description of mesenchymal cells.

Pamela Robey is used to being sent samples by scientists who are anxious to know whether the mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) they have extracted from fat can be coaxed to turn into either bone or cartilage.

Robey, who directs the Stem Cell Unit at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), is also used to delivering bad news to many of those who seek her help. “They usually are not happy,” she says, when her attempts to differentiate the cells produce little more than fatty globules.

To Robey, that disappointment reflects a pervasive misunderstanding about what MSCs are and what they can do — one that is fuelled by a lack of information. MSCs have been proposed as treatments for a wide range of ailments including heart and brain injury, joint damage, Crohn’s disease and multiple sclerosis. But some scientists say that these clinical aspirations have far outrun the basic science. “It always seems a little bit like hocus pocus when you’re treating everything from skeletal to immunological disorders,” says George Daley, director of the Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Boston Children’s Hospital in Massachusetts.

An international group of scientists, industry experts and governmental organizations is trying to introduce scientific clarity to the burgeoning field of MSCs. The group, which met for the first time in late March at NIH headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, hopes to introduce more rigorous research practices, and eventually to create scientific standards that could guide the commercial development of MSC-based therapeutics. The efforts, applauded by some, are now attracting criticism both from those who advocate MSCs as therapeutics and from those who think that the potential of the cells is oversold.

Even the definition of what constitutes an MSC is a matter of debate. First described...