1st stem cells from cloned humans that can end rejection problem

Scientists in South Korea have produced stem cells from cloned human embryos and patients’ skin cells.

This could mean the end of the rejection problem - when the body rejects a foreign body after transplantation.

The possible benefits for human health are enormous, offering perhaps cures for such illnesses as Type 1 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and a host of other conditions.

Exciting thing in this breakthrough is getting over the human body’s rejection of a foreign body. To date, all transplant patients have had to take immunosuppressant drugs (most of which have several undesirable side effects) for the rest of their lives.

These cell lines will enable the study of human disease in cells in the laboratory. The work also moves scientists’ one step closer to the goal of transplanting healthy cells into humans to replace cells damaged by diseases.

However, if the patient’s skin cells have been used in the creation of the stem cells, the chances of rejection are virtually non-existent. This means rejection-free treatment of a myriad of incurable diseases. The new cells (stem cells) are identical matches to the patient (because he/she is also part donor).

This breakthrough was reported in the journal ‘Science’. Science author Woo Suk Hwang from Seoul National University in Seoul, Korea and colleagues replaced the nuclei from donated oocytes with nuclei from skin cells from male and female patients, ranging in age from 2 to 56, who had spinal cord injuries, juvenile diabetes and the genetic disease “congenital hypogamma-globulinemia.”

From the 185 donated oocytes, endowed with the genetic material from a different person (or in one case, the same person), the researchers report development of 31 hollow balls of cells called “human nuclear-transfer blastocysts.”

From the 31 nuclear-transfer blastocysts, the scientists derived 11 stem cell lines. The researchers generated these stem cell lines ten times more efficiently than in their 2004 Science study, using improved laboratory methods.

The single cell line generated in the 2004 Science paper resulted from nuclear transfer in which the oocyte and non-reproductive (”somatic”) cell came from the same healthy female.

The new study produced a similar cell line from a woman who donated both the somatic cell and the oocyte; however, the donor was a spinal cord patient.

The ten additional new lines resulted from nuclear transfer with skin cells of males or females and oocytes from biologically-unrelated females.

Other improvements over the last paper include the reduced use of animal products in laboratory procedures and better evidence that the cell lines matched the patients’ cells and did not have a parthenogenetic origin, where unfertilized eggs can divide on their own.

Hwang and colleagues report that the cells are chromosomally normal, self-renewing and “pluripotent” - meaning they have the ability to form the three major types of cells in the early embryo that give rise to all other cells in the body.

For example, the stem cells can differentiate into cells that display characteristics of skin and retina cells, muscle cell bundles, bone matrix cells and cells of the gastrointestinal and respiratory lining.

One of the next preclinical steps, according to the authors, is to evaluate, in the lab, differentiated patient-specific human embryonic stem cell lines for immune-system tolerance, therapeutic efficacy and safety.

Initial laboratory experiments showed immune system compatibility between the stem cell lines and the cells of people who supplied each line’s nuclear DNA, suggesting that the patient’s body might tolerate the cells after transplantation.

The authors caution that work with human embryonic stem cells and studies of stem cells in animal model systems indicate that serious abnormalities in human development would result if the cells were used in reproductive cloning. Any attempts at reproductive cloning would be dangerous and should not be attempted under any conditions.

Researchers say that we are at the early stages of tailor made stem cell therapy. Many obstacles/doubts have to be overcome.

Scientists throughout the world are ecstatic about this breakthrough. Many, on the other hand, are concerned about the implications of using embryos for the advancement of science.