letheomaniac
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One in the balls for the anti-stem cell crowd
« on: 2008-10-09 07:04:00 » |
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[letheomaniac] Some interesting news for those Virians in possesion of a pair of testicles - unfortunately for me I only have the metaphorical kind. 
Source: National Geographic News
Author: Brian Handwerk
Dated: 8/10/2008
Human Testicles Yield Stem Cells
Scientists have derived potentially therapeutic stem cells from adult, human testicles—a development that may eventually make new medical treatments possible while avoiding moral dilemmas.
Stem cell generation for individual therapies could address a wide range of ailments, including Parkinson's disease, leukemia, and spinal cord injuries.
So far, the most versatile human stem cells have come from embryos—fertilized eggs—that critics say should not be used in scientific research because they are potential humans.
Study co-author Thomas Skutella, of the University of Tübingen in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, and his team isolated stem cells from adult, human testicles and cultivated them to become pluripotent cells, which can develop into many other types of cells.
"In the sense that they become pluripotent, they are like embryonic stem cells," Skutella wrote in an email.
Easing Concerns
A major breakthrough was made in 2006, when several research teams harvested stem cells from the testicles of adult mice.
Duplicating the feat in humans had proved elusive prior to research published online this week in Nature.
Japanese researchers announced in August that they had isolated stem cells in adult, human teeth, but the team's work was not peer reviewed.
"As you might imagine, this is a pretty significant step forward," said Chad Cowan of Harvard University's Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology.
Cowan is unaffiliated with the research.
"It looks like [the cells] have a broader development potential to become a lot of the different cell types we'd be interested in," he added.
"It's very exciting that we may now have a non-ethically troubling source of pluripotent cells for humans—or at least males."
One's Own Cells
The cells, which can be harvested from living men, may also remove some immunological obstacles.
"The exciting thing about this source of stem cells is that they are the patient's own and can be used to develop individual cell-based therapies that will not provoke any kind of immune reaction," Skutella said.
"That is one of the big drawbacks of embryonic stem cells: Quite aside from the grave ethical considerations, they remain a foreign body and will always create immunological problems."
Scientists hope that a similar cell source can be found in women.
Cellular Toolbox
But Skutella cautioned that the research is just a valuable step forward, and scientists must learn how to harness the cells to benefit patients.
Though pluripotent stem cells can be differentiated into any other kind of cell, they can't be implanted in their pluripotent state. They must be differentiated so that they self-renew as only one specific type of cell.
"Stem cell therapy is extremely promising, but it is still in its infancy," Skutella explained.
"You could think of it like this: What we have successfully done right now is identify a mother lode. That ore now needs to be forged into tools, i.e. the various differentiated cell lines," he wrote.
"Then someone needs to figure out how to use those tools to fix what's broken, [that is] to develop concrete therapies."
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