Stem cell 'major discovery' claimed

[cosmicalstorm]

This sounds almost too good to be true.

Stem cell researchers are heralding a "major scientific discovery", with the potential to start a new age of personalised medicine.

Scientists in Japan showed stem cells can now be made quickly just by dipping blood cells into acid.

Stem cells can transform into any tissue and are already being trialled for healing the eye, heart and brain.

The latest development, published in the journal Nature, could make the technology cheaper, faster and safer.

The human body is built of cells with a specific role - nerve cells, liver cells, muscle cells - and that role is fixed.

However, stem cells can become any other type of cell, and they have become a major field of research in medicine for their potential to regenerate the body.

Embryos are one, ethically charged, source of stem cells. Nobel prize winning research also showed that skin cells could be "genetically reprogrammed" to become stem cells (termed induced pluripotent stem cells).
Acid bath

Now a study shows that shocking blood cells with acid could also trigger the transformation into stem cells - this time termed STAP (stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency) cells.

Dr Haruko Obokata, from the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology in Japan, said she was "really surprised" that cells could respond to their environment in this way.

She added: "It's exciting to think about the new possibilities these findings offer us, not only in regenerative medicine, but cancer as well."

The breakthrough was achieved in mouse blood cells, but research is now taking place to achieve the same results with human blood.

Chris Mason, professor of regenerative medicine at University College London, said if it also works in humans then "the age of personalised medicine would have finally arrived."

He told the BBC: "I thought - 'my God that's a game changer!' It's a very exciting, but surprise, finding.

"It looks a bit too good to be true, but the number of experts who have reviewed and checked this, I'm sure that it is.

"If this works in people as well as it does in mice, it looks faster, cheaper and possibly safer than other cell reprogramming technologies - personalised reprogrammed cell therapies may now be viable."

For age-related macular degeneration, which causes sight loss, it takes 10 months to go from a patient's skin sample to a therapy that could be injected into their eye -and at huge cost.

Prof Mason said weeks could be knocked off that time which would save money, as would cheaper components.
'Revolutionary'

The finding has been described as "remarkable" by the Medical Research Council's Prof Robin Lovell-Badge and as "a major scientific discovery" by Dr Dusko Ilic, a reader in stem cell science at Kings College London.

Dr Ilic added: "The approach is indeed revolutionary.

"It will make a fundamental change in how scientists perceive the interplay of environment and genome."

But he added: "It does not bring stem cell-based therapy closer. We will need to use the same precautions for the cells generated in this way as for the cells isolated from embryos or reprogrammed with a standard method."

And Prof Lovell-Badge said: "It is going to be a while before the nature of these cells are understood, and whether they might prove to be useful for developing therapies, but the really intriguing thing to discover will be the mechanism underlying how a low pH shock triggers reprogramming - and why it does not happen when we eat lemon or vinegar or drink cola?"

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/a ... 989509.ece

[Broomstick]

It does sound too good to be true. What sort of blood cell? It can't be red blood cells, they no longer have a nucleus when circulating (at least not in mammals). Not enough details here.

Also, I find links that require some form of registration really annoying.

[cosmicalstorm]

Sorry wrong link.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014 ... -technique

[K. A. Pital]

If it is as good as they claim, we're really in for a huge improvement in life expectancy of the currently-living First Worlders and maybe even Second Worlders within a decade. Fingers crossed.

[cosmicalstorm]

Well it seems legit. Although I recall there have been some fraudulent behavior in this field in the past. But this seems like it should be quick and easy to replicate.

Abstract of Nature paper: Stimulus-triggered fate conversion of somatic cells into pluripotency

Here we report a unique cellular reprogramming phenomenon, called stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP), which requires neither nuclear transfer nor the introduction of transcription factors. In STAP, strong external stimuli such as a transient low-pH stressor reprogrammed mammalian somatic cells, resulting in the generation of pluripotent cells. Through real-time imaging of STAP cells derived from purified lymphocytes, as well as gene rearrangement analysis, we found that committed somatic cells give rise to STAP cells by reprogramming rather than selection. STAP cells showed a substantial decrease in DNA methylation in the regulatory regions of pluripotency marker genes. Blastocyst injection showed that STAP cells efficiently contribute to chimaeric embryos and to offspring via germline transmission. We also demonstrate the derivation of robustly expandable pluripotent cell lines from STAP cells. Thus, our findings indicate that epigenetic fate determination of mammalian cells can be markedly converted in a context-dependent manner by strong environmental cues.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature12968

Abstract of Nature paper: Bidirectional developmental potential in reprogrammed cells with acquired pluripotency

We recently discovered an unexpected phenomenon of somatic cell reprogramming into pluripotent cells by exposure to sublethal stimuli, which we call stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP). This reprogramming does not require nuclear transferor genetic manipulation. Here we report that reprogrammed STAP cells, unlike embryonic stem (ES) cells, can contribute to both embryonic and placental tissues, as seen in a blastocyst injection assay. Mouse STAP cells lose the ability to contribute to the placenta as well as trophoblast marker expression on converting into ES-like stem cells by treatment with adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and leukaemia inhibitory factor (LIF). In contrast, when cultured with Fgf4, STAP cells give rise to proliferative stem cells with enhanced trophoblastic characteristics. Notably, unlike conventional trophoblast stem cells, the Fgf4-induced stem cells from STAP cells contribute to both embryonic and placental tissues in vivo and transform into ES-like cells when cultured with LIF-containing medium. Taken together, the developmental potential of STAP cells, shown by chimaera formation and in vitro cell conversion, indicates that they represent a unique state of pluripotency.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature12969