Susan Solomon's Stem Cell Spin
Last week, researchers reported a significant advance toward better understanding of--and potential treatments for--Type 1 diabetes. Yet strangely enough, one research advocate used it as an opportunity to praise a technique that this study not only didn't use, but also helped to refute.
A realistic goal of stem cell research is to create in vitro models of human diseases. A key advantage of the new reprogramming methods of generating stem cells (also known as induced pluripotency) is that, because the cells are derived from a living person, the scientists can know much about how the cells' genes are expressed. Thus, a cell line derived from a person with a particular disease should have all the genes that contribute to that disease, regardless of whether these genes have been identified.
Doug Melton's team at Harvard University took this line of work one step farther. His colleague George Daley had already derived a stem cell line "with" Type I diabetes last year. Now, Melton has coaxed these stem cells into differentiating into functioning pancreatic beta cells, the exact cells which don't properly produce insulin in persons with diabetes. (Also see 1 and 2.)
One would think this advancement is another nail in the coffin of cloning-based stem cell research. For years, this method (also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, or SCNT) was proposed as the way to derive disease- and patient-specific pluripotent stem cells, but never yielded stem cell lines. Most observers now concede that the new reprogramming methods achieve the goal of SCNT without the need for embryos, cloning, and eggs.
But Susan Solomon of the New York Stem Cell Foundation clings to the cloning dream. In an email sent to NYSCF supporters, she spins Melton's work on its head, claiming that it somehow validates NYSCF's continuing advocacy of cloning for stem cells. (Below, in the comments, I quote her email at length, since the announcement does not appear to be on the Web.)
It is precisely the kind of path-breaking work that NYSCF was created to accelerate, and it makes clear the validity of the belief we had when we created NYSCF - that in order to find better treatments and cures for the major diseases that continue to confound us, we needed to bring the best scientists together, give them a safe haven laboratory, and use private funding to move their work ahead at the fastest possible pace....
In June '06 we issued a press release [PDF] announcing a collaboration to do just that using the method known as SCNT (with donated enucleated human oocytes), with Doug Melton and Kevin Eggan of HSCI, Robin Goland and Rudy Leibel of the Berrie Center, and NYSCF, using the fibroblasts specially created for this purpose in the NYSCF lab by Berrie PI Thomas Ludwig (fourth author on the paper). This experiment which was then and still is not eligible for funding by the NIH, was one which Doug, Kevin, Robin and Rudy believed was a top priority, but it had been completely stalled because of the lack of a safe haven lab in order to avoid potentially dire politically driven financial consequences to Columbia.
My take: Solomon and NYSCF bet on the wrong horse. Instead of admitting it, she is trying to link her support for a generally discredited method to one that is making rapid progress. Moreover, she is pushing [PDF] the New York state stem cell research funding program to aggressively pursue young women to provide eggs for cloning work by offering them payments--a step that breaks with consensus both nationally and internationally.
Previously on Biopolitical Times:
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