Stem Cells

Stem cells are a fascinating topic. Scientifically, they hold a lot of promise in better understanding development and perhaps someday, in treating a multitude of diseases (bone marrow transplants are already used to treat leukemias). The issue, however, is fraught with ethical dilemmas and political controversy. I just wanted to write about two sides of stem cells that I find interesting. The first is really unfortunate. There are a lot of stem cell scams out there (usually in other countries). I've seen websites with foreign doctors advertising that they can inject stem cells into patients to cure a variety of diseases. There's absolutely no evidence supporting these claims, and indeed, they may rely heavily on the placebo effect. These scams target scientifically naive people with lots of money, taking advantage of the popular media reporting on stem cells.

The second interesting thing is the recent two articles on induced embryonic stem cells. The problem with embryonic stem cells is that the isolation is ethically controversial. In these papers, two groups (including one associated with UCSF) report a new method of generating embryonic stem cells. A differentiated adult somatic cell is transfected with a retrovirus that encodes master transcriptional regulators. These induce the differentiated cell to become undifferentiated. I took a quick look at the papers and they're very cool. The cells resemble embryonic stem cells in all the ways tested. I think this breakthrough merits further investigation, but I caution those who pay attention only to the popular press that treatments for diseases like Parkinson's or Alzheimer's are still a long way away.