The story about the Chinese scientist, He Jiankui, who allegedly genetically manipulated embryos which then led to the birth of twins Lulu and Nana, was reported worldwide in the news. Following the announcement, numerous scientists got involved in the debate about the ethics of genetically manipulating human embryos, with an overwhelming majority of the scientific community unanimously condemning He’s actions. These ethical questions are not only of relevance for scientists; the question of whether we want to allow genetic engineering in humans, and on what scale, concerns us all. It is essen ..read more

Apart from some specific examples such as bone marrow transplants, stem cells are not currently used as a regular treatment for disease, and most stem cell therapies are still firmly in the development phase. However this isn’t to say that they aren’t already being utilised by scientists around the world everyday. So if stem cells are not currently being used in transplantation therapy, what are they being used for? One answer is disease modelling. What are disease models? The hunt for new drugs that might be able to slow disease progression or even reverse symptoms makes up a huge part o ..read more

New parents are faced with a thousand questions: What name shall we choose? How do I put together a flat pack cot? Am I ever going to sleep again? Which of my child’s stem cells should I freeze, umbilical cord or tooth…? This last question might not be something you hear every day, but the idea that new parents should store stem cells from their children is becoming less surprising. The idea is that they might serve as a future treatment strategy if a child becomes unwell. At the moment, storing umbilical cord blood at the time of a child’s birth is a more popular and well known concept, but t ..read more

Now that we have covered some background about stem cells and their potential use in medicine, we can look at a real clinical case where stem cells have been transplanted into a patient. The first ever clinical trial involving transplantation of cells made from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) is taking place in Japan, and the researchers have reported on their initial findings. The aim of the trial is to treat a degenerative disease that involves the loss of certain subset of cells in the eye, which eventually causes partial blindness. What is the trial about? The research group le ..read more

Cell therapy essentially means using cells as a treatment strategy for injury or disease, predominantly to replace cells that have lost their function or died. Stem cells are an exciting resource for this because they can be made into different types of cells, and the majority of cells that are needed for cell therapy cannot be collected from anywhere else — taking cells from a healthy person to treat a patient is not always feasible or ethical. Because stem cells in theory can be turned into anything, they can be used to replace lost cells, or to provide supportive cells that supply nutrients ..read more

Concerns surrounding the use of embryonic stem cells (ESCs) in research and medicine resulted in a huge effort focused on the development of an alternative type of stem cell that maintains the typical pluripotent characteristics, without the ethical burden. In 2006, researchers Yamanaka and Takahashi described the invention of a remarkable technique that produces stem cells by “reprogramming” somatic cells. The term “somatic” describes any cell of the body, such as a skin cell or a hair follicle cell; essentially any cell that has already begun the process of differentiation from a stem cell ..read more

Although it is often reported that the use of stem cells in research or medicine is morally questionable, a lot of people are unclear as to what the ethical issues associated with stem cell research actually are. First of all, it is important to know that the main ethical issues are mostly associated with embryonic stem cells (ESCs), which were the only pluripotent stem cells available for use in research for a long time. To understand why some people have ethical concerns around the use of ESCs, we need to understand where they come from. adapted from: wikimedia.org Every human bein ..read more

The term usually conjures up thoughts of embryo derived cells, but there are actually multiple kinds of stem cell, the majority of which are not from embryos. These can broadly be categorised into three groups: · Embryonic Stem Cells (ESCs) (these actually are derived from embryos) · Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs) · Adult Stem Cells (ASCs) The defining characteristics of all types of stem cell are that they can multiply themselves (they can “proliferate”) and they can subsequently turn into other kinds of cells (they can “differentiate”). ESCs sit at the beginning o ..read more

Stem cells are the future of medicine. Soon we will be able to create any organ from a single cell without any ethical concerns or problems with availability. Athletes receive stem cell ‘soups’ to help heal sport injuries. Stem cells will cure baldness. Stem cells are the Holy Grail for treating almost any disease be it Alzheimer’s, blindness, or diabetes. These sorts of claims are often made. However when looking at these matters more closely, we often find yourself thinking “yes … BUT”. For example: Yes, we are able transplant stem cells into humans, BUT we are a long way away from curi ..read more