Exciting Breakthroughs Make Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research Obsolete.
The last 18 months have seen incredible advances in stem cell technology--
advances that make embryonic stem cell research obsolete.And the science is moving quickly. When scientists announced that they
could reprogram ordinary skin cells to have all the characteristics of
human embryonic stem cells, it was huge. Since then, they have learned
how to accomplish this feat without the use of viruses, making cells
from reprogrammed skin cells much safe than prospective treatments
from embryonic stem cells.James A. Thomson is the discover of human embryonic stem cells,
and codiscoverer of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs)
also known as reprogrammed skin cells.“If human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least
a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough,”
he said.Later he says, “Isn’t it great to start a field and then to end it,”
acknowledging that embryonic stem cell research is no longer the most
promising avenue for research.For the New York Times interview,
"Man Who Helped to Start Stem Cell War May End It"
Here’s the link to the original New York Times article about the breakthrough,
with a great graphic that explains it:"Scientists Bypass Need for Embryo to Get Stem Cells"
And here’s the article from last week’s NYT talking
about last week's breakthrough in Parkinson’s research
using the new cells:Here are some abstracts on reprogrammed skin cells from the NIH website.
http://stemcells.nih.gov/
If you notice, all of these abstracts say that the reprogrammed skin cells
are pluripotent, and the actual scientific findings are pretty exciting, too.
Science has moved on. Human embryonic stem cell research is yesterday's
technology. While some scientists still want to do destructive embryo
research for basic research, scientists now acknowledge that the
hoped-for cures will come from reprogrammed skin cells,
or induced pluripotent cells, iPSCs.
