Adult stem cells have tremendous potential to find cure for Parkinson's, other diseases 11/18/2008 11:44 PM By CLARK GILLESPIE Columnist
You and I, dear reader, are prime examples of what a pleuripotential embryonic stem cell can do.
We are all - good, bad, or indifferent - derived from one single multi-tasking such stem cell engineered to produce a reasonable copy of the couple who intimately joined together to create that cell's building blocks.
This fundamental and incredible single cell soon begins to divide and the embryonic stem cells (ESC) it thus early-on produces are capable of developing into any tissue that they are called upon to create.
Consider, for instance, if its two cells arising from the very first division somehow become separated, both develop into complete humans and thus, identical twins. Pretty powerful ESCs!
Somewhat less magically capable are adult stem cells (ASC) which we all maintain in our bodies - mainly as fibroblasts - and which differentiate into mature cells comparable to the organs around them.
Thus bone marrow ASCs, at home in our blood building area, can differentiate into any kind of blood cell need - but that's it.
This limiting fact has led early researchers and potential therapists to embrace just embryonic stem cells.
In the past few years, however, abundant worldwide research has demonstrated that, properly stimulated and booted about, adult stems can attain many of the therapeutic potentials of their embryonic progenitor and that these scientists can thus avoid the moral disdain and criticism brought about by our ESC perversion.
This complicated research - in which Japanese scientists have been the leaders - has been accomplished in laboratories around the world.
Largely used in this basic laboratory work has been an entirely incredible multitude of mice. In order to achieve our human goals these little creatures have been subjected to experimental conditions and miserable burdens to create, test, and certify the stem cells we so earnestly desire. Thus, this research history is clearly a juxtaposition of mice and men.
Is the stem cell story of importance to seniors? Clearly it is of vital importance. Let's just take one single and classic example:
Parkinson's Disease is confined mainly to our ranks in that at least 2 percent of us over 65 will succumb to its tremors, rigidity and decreased mobility.
The disorder is caused by the degeneration and loss of "dopamine" producing brain neurons. Several laboratories have been able to develop neuron cells from ESCs that regularly make this chemical and have successfully introduced them into mice brains. Incidentally, not all basic research that is successful in mice can be transferred to man.
So why not initially use us? You're joking. Anyway, Parkinson's Disease it but one degenerative captor that engulfs us seniors and which should respond to stem cell reparation.
Returning to all basic stem cell biology, there are two fundamental characteristics that they possess. The first is an ability to divide for great lengths of time. Most cells - all normal body cells - have a limited number of division potentials before they expire or become fixed.
The abnormal exception is cancer cells which are more or less immortal because they can divide forever - as long as someone feeds them.
Stem cells, however, can go on normally dividing way beyond the limits set upon working body cells. This makes them very valuable in the replacement business when they are rebuilding a tissue or organ structure with multiple needs.
The second characteristic is their ability - under special circumstances - to evolve, with these appropriate stimulations, into almost any cell-type that such stimulation requests.
This capacity is incredible and is controlled by a series of individual intracellular gene reactions that you and I cannot even talk about let alone understand.
Though we cannot expound upon them over a beer or a game of bridge, we must understand that their pleuropotential characteristics and capabilities are such that they may just alter the face of medicine as we now know it.
Because of the difficulty in obtaining an adequate and regular supply of embryonic stems, and the moral storm that proceeds with it, scientists have been actively searching for an alternative.
Adult stem cells first were driven to this goal by mice in 2006, and, finally, in us sometime during last year. Called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS - that's right - iPS) such cell are modified from adult human fibroblast cells which, as we have seen, are adult stems (ASC).
Their manufacturing is, again, beyond our understanding. It involves treating ASC cells with retroviruses, removal or suppression of certain genes (blue genes?) while adding others. The result of this incredible and complicated work is an ASC that closely mimics an ESC and can reproduce most all of its miracles.
Now available for human research work, the time is rapidly approaching when controlled studies will release these iPS miracles for the salvation o our worn-out human parts and bodies.
Great promise exists in tissue and organ rebuilding at anytime in a life by the application of modified ASC capabilities.
For example, immune-resistant pancreatic ASC islet cells may banish diabetes1 from our midst, damage or destroyed tissue and organs may be rebuilt, or newborn embryonic defects may be ASC corrected.
Most important to us and our burgeoning senior gang is the vast replacement potential of modified ASC cells to restore our abused and worn-out parts.
Some private parts that we once considered extremely important, may, however, be way down upon, or may not even make that restorative list. So, no new ESCs from our gang!
Clark Gillespie is a retired OB/GYN who now lives in Aiken.
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Comment Title: rlsassone@aol.com
Adult stem cells do not suffer from the major medical defect that still make and may possibly always make embryonic stem cells useless for practical medicine. We do not have immune type difficulties with adult stem cells taken from our own body.
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