The outlook for mice with sickle cell anemia is very good.

A research article in the online version of the journal Science, Treatment of Sickle Cell Anemia Mouse Model with iPS Cells Generated from Autologous Skin, reported that researchers at the Whitehead Institute, MIT, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham treated humanized sickle cell anemia mouse models with stem cells.

The stem cells were derived from adult tissue and reprogrammed into iPS cells (induced pluripotent stem cells). These iPS cells were coaxed into becoming tissue that produces blood cells in a petri dish. The defective gene causing sickle-cell was then replaced in this tissue, and the corrected tissue inserted into the mice.

The tissue produced healthy blood cells in the mice whose sickle-cell symptoms were eradicated.

Huge technical hurdles exist before this type of therapy could ever make the jump from the lab to clinical trials.

Mice everywhere should be ecstatic though.

California Congressman, Henry Waxman, has proposed a bill to Congress allowing the FDA to approve generic versions of biotech products.

This bill would enact a process similar to the approval process of generic pharmaceuticals.

Dr. Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology Inc. told Reuters that his company has created stem cell lines by taking one cell from an embryo. The breakthrough in this work was that the embryos were not destroyed, but rather frozen and still viable for implantation.

Theoretically this advancement should remove ethical concerns of those who oppose destruction of embryos.

Read more about this research on Advanced Cell Technology, Inc.’s website.

Craig Venter was back in the science news this week reporting that one of his teams has succesfully swapped an entire genome from one bacteria into a related species.

This marks the first time an entire genome has been swapped from one species to another. Previous genetic engineering has only used small DNA sequences, not entire genomes.

Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon National Primate Research Centre in the United States has reported that he has successfully created stem cells from cloned monkey embryos. The research has not been published yet. Mitalipov reported that he created the embryos by using DNA from monkey skin cells transferred into the nucleus of an egg cell.

Korean cloning scientist Woo Sook Hwang was discredited last year after his claims of success in a similar process using human eggs proved false.

Today’s Wall Street Journal featured an article entitled “Stem Cell Advance May Skirt Ethical Debate.” Scientists from several different groups independently succeeded in returning mature cells back to an embryonic state. These cells in turn demonstrated the same plasticity that makes embryonic stem cells so interesting for research.

The researched is discussed in terms for the layreader in the journal, Nature.

Wikispecies is an interesting wiki project providing an open directory of species. This is a very cool project that brings together information from a lot of different specialties.

“Wikispecies - what and why?
Biologists who classify new species normally publish in specialized journals, which has led to an overwhelming amount of information with nobody keeping an overview. Even experts in very specialized fields often don’t notice if a species has been formally recorded twice, three times or even more often. Therefore, it is not known how many species there are known – and this is just as ridiculous as it sounds. We are not talking about all species that exist on earth - but simply the total number of species that were already recorded in scientific publications.” - from Wikispecies

Searching for information uses Taxonavigation (search by taxonomy) and the site currently features over 100,000 articles.

Wikispecies

The California Supreme Court declined to review the ruling of the lower court in the ongoing Institute for Regenerative Medicine legal battle. This frees the Institute to begin dispersing funds created by the 2004 California ballot initiative.

More information on the California Institute of Regerative Medicine can be found on the CIMR homepage.

Much has been made of the statistics showing US students falling behind the rest of the industrial world in science education.  Whether or not this is true is open to debate, but national standardized testing has shown a decrease in science proficiency levels among high school seniors.  The decline has been attributed to many causes, but there is no debate about the scarcity of trained science teachers at the high school level. 

Those of us working in the life science industry need to remember to do our part in interesting children in the sciences. Volunteering teaching is good, but introducing any child to the wonders of science can spur a lifelong interest.  It doesn’t take much effort or time, but it can change the course of student’s life.

 Read more about the issue at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/25/education/25exam.html?ex=1179547200&en=2ccc11033d14f80f&ei=5070

http://ded.mo.gov/upload/is_america_falling_behind_in_math_and_science.pdf

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2004/tc20040316_0601_tc166.htm

http://www.nsta.org/

American politicians love the stem cell debate, but it is a moral argument for many people where common ground is hard to find.

One side of the argument says that stem cell research should be banned entirely because it is immoral to use stem cells from fetal tissue. The other side argues a moral obligation to pursue any research that is a potential cure for disease.

Such diametrically opposing views can never find a true common ground, because they challenge core beliefs.

The pragmatic view held by John McCain and some others is that embryos slated for destruction should be used to advance research. Opponents argue that such use is a slippery slope towards therapeutic cloning to supply fetal tissue.

President George W. Bush’s solution was to limit federal funding of stem cell research to cell lines complying with the following rules:

• The derivation process (which begins with the destruction of the embryo) was initiated prior to 9:00 P.M. EDT on August 9, 2001.
• The stem cells must have been derived from an embryo that was created for reproductive purposes and was no longer needed.
• Informed consent must have been obtained for the donation of the embryo and that donation must not have involved financial inducements.

In making this decree he touched off a storm of debate about the interference of his personal religious views on scientific freedom and the government.  This domestic policy has led other countries; Israel, Singapore, and South Korea among them ; to market themselves to the world as stem cell research havens. 

Domestically the policy has led to different outcomes.  California stepped to the forefront and established state funding for stem cell research. Researchers across the United States continue to perform stem cell research either by complying with the federal guidelines or foregoing federal funding for their projects.  Private industry also has stepped in to fill the void. Thirty-three biotech companies in the US claim to perform stem cell research. Europe claims six and only Asia claims only eight. Certainly both Europe and Asia have more companies than this performing stem cell research, but it makes it hard to argue that the US is falling behind.

A cursory keyword search for “stem cell” on Medline yields 167,017 articles.  The authors represent institutions and countries from around the globe.

The final question after all this debate and research is what treatments have been developed? The truth is that very few stem cell therapies have been developed for humans thus far. Bone marrow transplants and umbilical cord blood transplants are both stem cell therapies and demonstrate their future promise.  As the field develops it will lead to a better understanding of the human body and very likely therapies to heal it.

Further resources:

Genetic Science Learning Center at the University of Utah

Stem Cell Research Insitute

Investing in Stem Cell Companies

California Institute for Regenerative Medicine