On April 26, 2005 a federal document was released describing the national guidelines for human embryonic stem cell research in order to regulate how stem cell research is performed and to minimize controversy. This document was complied by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council. Premise for creating the document was based on the fact that human embryonic stem cells may have the ability to provide great improvements in human health. Although the potential for lifestyle improvement is great, stem cell research must be regulated to prevent inappropriate application of this relatively new discovery.

Above is an image of an embryonic stem cell in an extracellular matrix.

Where do the Human Embryos come from?

Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) was created over 20 years ago to overcome fertility problems. ART utilizes In Vitro Fertilization (IVF), which is fertilization of an egg by a sperm outside the body (for example, in a petri dish). Many ART procedures result in an excess amount of embryos and the people involved in creating those embryos have the option of cryopreserving them to be stored for future attempts to enable pregnancy. Over 400,000 of these cryopreserved embryos are stored in the United States alone. Therefore, once the “owners” of the embryo choose to terminate treatment, they have a number of options for their excess embryos. One of those options is to donate them for research purposes. The only way to get these embryos (which are in the form of blastocysts) into labs for research is to get consent from all of the gamete donors for the blastocyst to be used in research.

Above is am image of an eight cell embryo obtained from an In Vitro Fertilization Program (IVF).

How are Embryos Stored?

Storage, maintenance, and distribution of cell lines must also adhere to certain national standards. There exist national stem cell banks** (and international stem cell banks as well) that store stem cells according to legal requirements. They are established for various functions to ensure legitimate protocol. On the privacy plane, stem cell banks ensure that the rights of the gamete donors have not been abused and make sure that proper consent forms by all gamete donors are completed and accurate. These banks also limit the number of embryos that any one institution can receive, which is vital in regulating abuse of stem cell research. Further regulation of storing and obtaining tissues lies in the requirement that any identifiable tissue is required to pass an Institutional Review Board (IRB) review at the collection site.

Quality Assurance of Embryos

Safety, security, and risk assessments are performed on the management side of this issue in order to ensure appropriate handling and storage of the embryos. This is vital to maintain high quality stem cells for research and clinical studies. Validating submitted tissues, culturing and expanding cell lines, process control, packaging for distribution and documentation are all processes that are monitored and constantly checked by the quality management team of the stem cell banking facility. Detailed reports of every aspect for every tissue that enters a banking facility are required in order to assure accuracy and enable tracking. It is increasingly vital for research institutions to obtain high quality cell lines as they approach their in vivo testing. Poor stem cell quality could create adverse effects on the test subject’s body and put the subject’s life in danger.

All information obtained from Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research.

-Amy

The most pluripotent of all stem cells, embryonic stem cells, are obtained from the inner mass of the early developing stages of an embryo (as shown in the figure below with a blastocyst). Stem cells obtained from this newly developed bundle of cells have the full potential to differentiate into absolutely anything in the human body. Many scientists believe that embryonic stem cell research could lead to therapies that have the potential to cure at least 120 million Americans. They believe that these cells have the potential to cure thousands of disorders and biomedical problems such as Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease and spinal cord injury. Many tissue engineers also believe that stem cells can lead to artificial organ replacements, which would be a high priority on the market due to the shortage of organ donors in the United States. These are the types of cells that bring about the stem cell controversy because they are taken from a five to six day old embryo. President Bush has legalized approximately 60 genetically diverse stem cell lines that can legally be used in research laboratories in the United States. The constant struggle between science, the government, and religion is at the pinnacle of this controversy.

Dr. Shahin Rafii and his team from Howard Hughes Medical Institute have been fighting for ten years to eliminate the stem cell controversy by utilizing adult stem cells. Adult stem cells can be obtained from full-grown adults rather than newly conceived embryos, but not all of their cells are stem cells because the majority of them have already differentiated into specific tissue types. Therefore, stem cells have to be found in special parts of the body where they have been saved and undifferentiated, like in bone marrow or early stages of tissue development. These cells are not fully pluripotent and (so far) have only been able to differentiate into a limited number of tissues. However they have been used for various applications such as cloning, trying to cure diabetes, and artificial blood. Dr. Rafii and his team have successfully reprogrammed adult stem cells from male mice’s testes into functional blood vessels and contractile cardiac tissue, which can aid in organ regeneration studies. They utilized spermatogonial progenitor cells and reprogrammed them to form multipotent adult spermatogonial-derived stem cells. They hypothesize that further research will lead to similar results in human adult stem cells, eventually leading to treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer. This is the first time that researchers have been able to successfully isolate the small subset of pluripotent stem cells existing in adult testes. The world now awaits the results from human trials and hopes for successful reprogramming, which can eventually lead to several cures.

-Amy

Recently written articles on www.AmyShah.com, like The Basics of Stem Cells and some Weekly Updates, helped inform readers of the difficulties researchers have experienced when trying to experiment with stem cells. The morality of using embryonic stem cells is constantly challenged and the current presidential office opposes any further embryonic stem cell lines to be obtained.

So what’s going on with embryonic stem cells right now? Despite the moral challenges, high costs, difficulty of obtaining approval for research, and poor quality of several existing stem cell lines, over 500 companies (with collaborators) are currently conducting embryonic stem cell research. Experts from Nature say that these “hard cells” bring about an entirely new type of bioengineering that will reign over this field for decades to come.

Stem cells have had a larger impact on society than most scientific discoveries. It’s up to us to decide whether to speed up this research by supporting it, or slow down the healing process for millions of dying people.

Everyone knows that science has been booming at an insanely quick rate for the past decade. The world has erupted with stem cells, tissue engineering, cures for diabetes and Alzheimer’s Disease all in the past ten years! But what about the next ten years? MSNBC predicts that stem cells will be the norm, tissue engineering will be a replacement for most major surgeries with the remaining surgeries to be preformed by robots, and cures to widespread diseases will be perfected. If you’re not very fond of reading, watch this video The Year 2017 and get a glipse of what is to come (the video will play after a 30 second commercial).

There’s so much going on in the world of science, unfortunately I can not cover it all. Here’s the latest buzz going around in the field.

Reversing Alzheimer’s Disease
Alzheimer’s Disease has gotten SO much buzz this week! It’s on CNN.com, Medical News Today UK, Google News, and the list goes on…
The interesting thing about this “cure” is the possibility of reversing memory loss through mental stimulation by a specific drug treatment. MIT has conducted extensive research on patients with neurodegenerative disorders and shown that the memories aren’t lost, they are just inaccessible. Further research may lead to endless possibilities for not only Alzheimer’s patients, but patients with dementia or any type of neurological damage.

Embryonic Stem Cells
When this embryonic stem cell revolution began over eight years ago, people didn’t expect such a large moral argument to arise from what considered a future medical miracle. This article presents a different view of embryonic stem cells that many people may not be used to reading: The View From the Hill.

Cloning
A new country is now on the brink of medical research: Victoria, Australia. A measure to use embryos to create and clone stem cells has been passed and an exciting project is now underway! Embryonic stem cells are clonogenic, which means that they can give rise to a colony of genetifcally identical cells (clones) that have the same properties of the original cell. Imagine the possibilities.

The very mention of the words “stem cell” perk up everyone’s ears. Although this topic is so controversial and exciting, do most people understand what stem cells are? This is a basic guide to stem cells with all the definitions, abbreviations, and applications you need to know to carry on a conversation about stem cell development, research, or controversy.

Cells - The Basic Unit of Life
Starting from the beginning, cells are the basic unit of all life. They contain DNA (deoxribonucleaic acid), which is all of the cell’s genetic material. They also have the ability to undergo cell division and replication, which creates two daughter cells with identical DNA. There are somatic cells and germline cells. Somatic cells make up every part of your body from your eyes, to your skin, to your heart. Somatic cells are also the type of cells that cancer research uses and the types of cells that were used in Dolly, the sheep clone. Germline cells are sex cells that are used in sexual reproduction with females and males carying different types. When a female germline cell (ova) and a male germline cell (spermatazoa) combine during sexual reproduction, they form a zygote. The zygote then goes through several divisions (showed below) to form into a ball of pluripotent cells called stem cells.

Enter Stem Cells…
The yellow cells in the figure above are pluripotent stem cells, which means these cells have much potential to differentiate into any type of somatic cell in the body. Differentiation is a developmental process by which unguided cells “turn into” a specific somatic cell type, like a blood cell or a nerve cell. During embryonic development, the perfect amounts of stem cells differentiate into every type of tissue to create all of the wonderful organs in our body as demonstrated below. While healthy (non-cancerous) cells in the body go through only about 50 replication cycles and then naturally kill themselves (to prevent excessive genetic mutations), stem cell have the capacity to theoretically divide forever. They can go on through millions and billions of cycles developing new cells with no limit, if supplied with the proper environment.

Types of Stem Cells
There are three main types of stem cells which are all obtained differently, have diverse applications, and face various controversies.

Embryonic Stem (ES) Cells can be obtained from the early developing stages of an embryo as shown in the first figure with a blastocyst. Stem cells obtained from this newly developed bundle of cells have the full potential to differentiate into absolutely, positively anything in the human body. Many scientists believe that embryonic stem cell research could lead to therapies that have the potential to cure at least 120 million Americans. They believe that these cells have the potential to cure thousands of disorders and biomedical problems such as Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, spinal cord injury, and organ replacements. These are the types of stem cells that are under constant controversy because they are taken from a five to six day old embryo . President Bush has legalized approximately 60 genetically diverse stem cell lines that can legally be used in research laboratories in the United States. The constant struggle between science, the government, and religion is at the pinnacle of this controversy.

Adult Stem Cells can be obtained from full-grown adults, but not all of their cells are stem cells because the majority of them have already differentiated. Therefore stem cells have to be found in special parts of the body where they have been saved and undifferentiated, like in bone marrow or early stages of tissue development. These cells are not fully pluripotent and (so far) have only been able to differentiate into a limited number of tissues. However they have been used for various applications such as cloning, trying to cure diabetes, and artificial blood. A major controversy in adult stem cell research has been cloning and the effects of cloning. The biggest question that is pending is how far people will go with cloning as fears rise such as in the book Brave New World and the movie The Island. Cloning is limited to animal use only and it is strictly and absolutely unlawful to apply to human use…for now.

Umbilical Cord Stem Cells can be obtained from the umbilical cord of a new born baby. Millions of multipotent (not as much potential as pluripotent, but more potential than differentiated cells) stem cells lie in the umbilical cord and the blood in it. These stem cells can be saved in a stem cell bank and later used for bone marrow, anemia, and cancer treatments. There is not much wide-spread controversy in these types of stem cells because the umbilical cord is usually thrown away after child birth. Therefore this stem cell bank idea utilizes trash and turns it into a potential life saver.

More information on stem cells can be obtained from National Institutes of Health, The White House’s Stem Cell Fact Sheet, TIME/CNN, and The University of California, Irvine.
-Amy Shah

Type 1 diabetes is an illness in which the body’s immune system kills off insulin produced naturally in the body. As a result, victims of type 1 diabetes have to administer regular insulin shots to themselves in order to control their blood-sugar levels. This affects over 340,000 people in the United States alone!

Imagine changing those hundreds of thousands of peoples everyday lives. Scientists have conducted a risky trial and successfully injected stem cells into 15 patients with type 1 diabetes. Thirteen of the 15 patients have ditched their insulin shots and can have been able to live healthy lives ever since the treatment!

Alternative treatments are also still in the testing phase, however this treatment has the potential to be the cure to diabetes because it’s has undergone Phase III research. This treatment’s problem is the wide opposition to stem cell research (like President Bush) that will push it back for an indefinite amount of time. This cure could change the life of 1 in every 800 people with type 1 diabetes, support stem cell research because its potential could soon change your life.

There’s so much going on in the world of science, unfortunately I can not cover it all. Here’s the latest buzz going around in the field.

Stem Cells
Scientists in the UK have developed an artificial heart valve grown from stem cells. Artificial heart valves are usually made from bovine materials, plastic, or metal alloys, however immune rejection of foreign materials in the body becomes a huge problem that can lead to heart disorders. These stem cell heart valves have the potential to prevent risk of endocarditis and stenosis because they act just like natural heart valves.

Nanotechnology
Purdue’s Brick nanotechnology center is utilizing nanopore channels to distinguish specific sequences of DNA. They created channels with diameters between ten and twenty nanometers in silicone and attached a single strand of DNA to each channel. As liquid containing DNA translocates through the nanopores due to a generated voltage difference across the channel, they can differentiate between certain DNA molecules.

Nicotine and Memory
Nicotine has the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and activates reward pathways in the brain that trigger feelings of euphoria and satisfaction; this is what makes it so addictive. Dutch scientists have taken advantage of this powerful property of nicotine and discovered how it affects memory in the brain. Nicotine influences neural wiring to enhance memory by strengthening the connections between neurons when the brain is accessing memory.

-Amy Shah

Batten disease is a genetic disorder in which waste builds up in the body and kills healthy cells. This disease affects about three in every 100,000 children in the United States and most of them die before they reach their teenage years. Batten disease causes the victim to go blind and become paralyzed before they die, and there is absolutely no cure for it. Martin McGlynn, CEO of Stem Cells Inc., came up with the idea of inserting highly purified neural stem cells into the patient’s brain to the create new cells to replace the ones killed by the waste build up. This idea wouldn’t be a cure to the disease, but a treatment to at least extend the patient’s lifespan. Fetal tissue transplant treatments need to be federally approved on a case-by-case basis due to high moral objections of embryonic stem cells and abortion issues. Since McGlynn was only testing his theory and knew that it would be hard to get a procedure approval, he decided to use a “test subject” and pay for the operation with his company’s money.

Meet Daniel Kerner, a six-year-old Batten disease victim from Trabuco Canyon, California. He’s a second grader at Robinson Elementary School and he’s waiting to die. Daniel’s family was scared for his life ever since two years ago when he was diagnosed with Batten disease and pronounced his death sentence. McGlynn got in touch with Daniel’s father, Marcus Kerner, and proposed his experimental plan of stem cell transplantation and the need for a “test subject” with Batten disease. The McGlynn family initially had many reservations about this entirely experimental treatment that had never been done before. They were over-whelmed with the embryonic stem cell and abortion controversies, as well as the possibility of Daniel’s body rejecting the cells. However, Daniel’s life had been waning away over the past two years as he lost his ability to walk and talk. McGlynn was offering Daniel a chance to get to live his life for longer than expected; maybe five years, maybe ten, maybe twenty, no one knows. The Kerner family agreed to administer the experimental treatment to Daniel last month in Portland. For the first time ever, eager doctors inserted neural embryonic stem cells from aborted fetuses into Daniel’s brain as an attempt to extend his life. Daniel has successfully recovered from his eight hour surgery and is scheduled to return home on December 15 since his body is showing no signs of rejection of the stem cells. “He was a little boy who was basically waiting to die, now he’s waiting to get better,” Marcus Kerner says as he thanks the doctors who helped his son. Thanks to Daniel and his family, this experiment will be conducted on five more children over the course of a year. The results will hopefully help to build towards a widely accepted form of treatment for all Batten disease victims.

-Amy Shah

Stem cell research over at the University of California, Irvine is booming! Dr. Ken Cho is on his way to finding the cure for diabetes. He has discovered over 50 genes in mouse embryonic stem cells that promote insulin-producing cells. If he is able to activate these genes in mice, he’s one step closer to finding out how to activate them in humans. Activating these cells will mean that a diabetic person’s life-style can go back to normal with their cells producing insulin for them.

-Amy Shah