Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Date: June 7, 2007
Summary:
The San Francisco Chronicle reports on a new way to change skin cells into cells with a key trait of embryonic stem cells: the ability to turn into any of the human body's cell types:
"Scientists showed how it might be possible to turn an ordinary skin cell into an embryonic stem cell, offering a template for producing just about any kind of cell needed to study or treat disease. The experiments, done in mice, essentially rewind the process of embryonic development, suggesting in principle that the same thing can be done in humans."
The article also discusses the potential this finding might have to reshape the debate over embryonic stem cell research:
"If human experiments work, and there is no guarantee, the new findings could blunt -- and eventually could even render moot -- some of the main ethical objections and practical limitations of human embryonic stem cell research. That's because it might not be necessary to destroy viable human embryos, or solicit women to donate fresh human eggs, to carry out some of the critical stem cell experiments."
Christopher Scott, a cell biologist and director of the Program on Stem Cells and Society at Stanford University, said the finding provides researchers with new information about stem cell function:
"It's a very interesting result that gives us more information about how this very unusual process of reprogramming works." However, he is uncertain as to whether it will take the place of therapeutic cloning:
""Will it be a substitute for nuclear transfer? I don't know. Other people will need to try it, and we need to see how complete the reprogramming mechanism is and whether the mice and cells will be completely normal."
A University of California at San Francisco stem cell researcher cautions that the procedure still has yet to be proven effective in humans.
