New developments in human cell research could eventually make the current bitter debate over embryonic stem-cell research seem as irrelevant as the fears of early Victorians who worried the human body couldn’t withstand the strain of traveling on trains reaching 30 miles per hour.
The holy grail of various types of research on human cells has been to ultimately come up with ways to repair or even replace ailing human organs.
For example, Type 1 diabetics usually suffer from that disease because of damage to their panc reas, the organ that produces the insulin necessary to manage their blood sugar levels. In theory, that disease can be cured by transplanting a new pancreas from an organ donor.
But even when an organ donor is found, a patient’s immune system will attack a donated organ the way it attacks any foreign tissue. Drugs can be used to suppress that immune reaction, but then the immune system may not reject disease-causing bacteria.
The perfect solution would be to take cells from a patient’s own damaged organ and grow a new pancreas, heart, or whatever that’s biologically identical to the original organ.
Unfortunately, no one has been able to do that yet.
Until now, one of the most promising lines of research involved embryonic stem cells — generic cells not yet equipped with the specific codes to make them into livers, hearts or whatever. But some objected to such experiments because embryos have the potential to become human beings. Advocates countered that the embryos used in stem-cell research were surplus embryos donated from fertility clinics that would otherwise be destroyed.
But the ethical dispute aside, embryonic stem cells are at best a clumsy way to replicate a specific patient’s cells because they must first be inserted with DNA from the proposed recipient.
It would be much better to use stem cells from that patient that already possess the proper genetic code. That’s what research in adult stem cells and umbilical cord blood has tried to do.
Now, two teams of scientists have announced that by adding just four genes to skin cells from a patient, they can reprogram them into blank slates that should be able to turn into any of the 220 cell types of the human body — genetically identical to those already in that patient’s body.
Don’t break out the champagne just yet. There are years of research ahead before this new approach yields reliable results — and during that time, alternative methods, including embryonic stem-cell research — should be vigorously pursued.
But for the first time it seems possible that real hope can replace political bombast in this critical field of medical research.
