Stem Cell Source (01.06.04) - Scientists may have found what they hope is a less controversial way of getting special human cells that can turn into any part of the body and potentially cure many diseases. This new source doesn't use embryos.
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Both of the leading Democratic candidates say the federal government should support embryonic stem cell research that could lead to cures for millions of patients. As this ScienCentral News video reports, a leading stem cell researcher left the U.S. to pursue that dream.
Moving Forward
South Korean scientists announced on February 12th that they had cloned human stem cells, which could be used to replace cells damaged by disease or aging. The research was announced in the U.S. but is strictly limited here, which has forced some Americans to do their research abroad.
Roger Pedersen, professor of regenerative medicine at the University of Cambridge and director of the Cambridge Centre for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine, decided in 2001 to leave the University of California at San Francisco for England when President Bush banned research that creates any type of human embryo. "The United States government had at that moment cancelled its plans, suspended really any consideration of funding this area of research," Pedersen says. "And I had by then dedicated my entire lab to carrying out research on human embryonic stem cells. I had to consider other options," he says. "One way would be to stop working on human embryonic stem cells, but I didn't choose that option. I chose to move to a country that was willing to provide support, broad support for this research."
Today Pedersen is pleased with his decision. "The support for stem cell research in the UK is very broad. It's at every level, it's at the government level, at the highest level of the government, the Prime Minister certainly supports this research. It's at the level of the policymakers, and it's at the level of the universities, so in fact it's a culture that supports stem cell research."
New Jersey recently joined California in deciding to support embryonic stem cell research, but state dollars can't come anywhere near the funding levels of federally supported research. While the U.S. government provides broad support for research on adult stem cells, Pedersen points out that learning to transform those cells for therapy will still require understanding embryonic stem cells and "what it is about the egg that has this awesome power, that it can take a body cell and turn it into a cell that can make every tissue in the body," he says. "So just imagine that we do understand the secret of the egg. Then we could hopefully take tissues that are specialized and turn them into another type of cell, without going through the egg."
February 12th news conference.
Pedersen believes that stem cell research provides us with a whole new way of understanding health and diseases. "We are more than just a bag of DNA," he says. "We are more than just our genetic material. We replace ourselves continually...This continual renewal or turnover of cells is what keeps us healthy. If we didn't have cells being produced constantly from our stem cells, we would become very ill very quickly and die. In fact, the diseases that we see that are untreatable currently, are often diseases of tissues that don't work effectively to renew themselves from stem cells— diseases of the heart, diseases of the pancreas, diseases of the brain.
"We of course ultimately came in our entirety from the stem cells of the embryo that gave rise to us," he says. "And what we're hoping is that the insights that we get from studying stem cells in the petri dish will lead us to an understanding of how to make that process work better in the body."
And what was Pedersen's reaction to the announcement from South Korea? "This has been hypothetical up till now, at least for human eggs," he says. "This shows that human eggs are like animal eggs in that they can accept a cell, a body cell, and turn it into an embryonic cell, which is very important. I think what's going to happen next is that a significant amount of attention will start to be paid to what can actually be done with this technology."
The South Korean stem cell research was published in the February 13th, 2004 issue of Science, and was funded by the South Korean government.
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