Reprogrammed Stem Cells Are Rife with Mutations
By Emily Singer,
Technology Review
| 03. 03. 2011
The findings cast doubt on a promising alternative to the use of embryonic stem cells in medicine.
Adult cells that have been reprogrammed into stem cells harbor a number of genetic mutations, some of which appear in genes that have been linked to cancer. While scientists don't yet know how this might affect the use of the cells in medicine, they say the findings show that the cells need to be studied much more extensively.
"As we think about using [these] cells for therapy, we will want to consider what kinds of screening tests we want to do," says Lawrence Goldstein, a professor of molecular biology at the University of California, San Diego. One of the major concerns about stem-cell-based therapies has been whether they carry a risk of cancer; both stem cells and cancer cells are distinguished by their ability to continually divide.
In two studies published today in Nature, researchers analyzed the genome of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, adult cells that have been genetically or chemically reverted to the stem cell state. These cells have attracted intense interest from both scientists and the public as a potential alternative to embryonic stem cells. Like...
Related Articles
By Priyanka Runwal, Chemical and Engineering News | 08.05.2024
Saritee Sanodiya, 26, has spent countless days wondering if she’ll ever live a “normal” life. Growing up, Sanodiya often missed school, frequenting the hospital for sudden, life-threatening drops in her hemoglobin levels and excruciating pain in her joints. High fever...
It’s been a busy couple of months in biopolitics, with developments in the US, UK, China, Japan, and implicitly on Mars. Time for a brief roundup.
• • •
Bioethics needs an update
The National Research Act is now 50 years old. It was signed into law on July 12, 1974, as a direct response to publicity about the 1932 “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.” The Hastings Bioethics Forum celebrated its anniversary with an...
Image courtesy National Human Genome Research Institute
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to encourage effective medical advances while also ensuring that patients and research subjects are protected. This dual mandate demands tricky judgment calls that are made more difficult by outside pressures of several kinds, political, judicial, and especially commercial. This April story at Bloomberg examines one deeply troubling pattern of regulatory capture:
Americans Are Paying Billions to Take Drugs That Don’t Work
Companies are increasingly...
By Sarah Kliff and Azeen Ghorayshi, The New York Times | 07.15.2024