Lead Into Gold: Scientists Wax Enthusiastically

The power of the IPSCs is becoming so evident that, like Ian Wilmut before them, many scientists are joining the field. From a story in Nature Reports Stem Cells:

The fact that making iPS cells does not pose the technical and ethical challenges of working with eggs or embryos is drawing large numbers of researchers into the field and speeding up reprogramming research. “This is definitely the hot thing right now,” says Melina Fan, executive director of Addgene, the Cambridge, Massachusetts–based nonprofit repository that distributes both Thomson’s and Yamanaka’s viral vectors for the cell-reprogramming genes. As of 17 April, she says, there have been 704 requests from 178 labs at 142 institutions for Thomson’s vectors; 514 requests from 131 labs at 113 institutions for Yamanaka’s human iPS cell vectors; and over 1,500 requests from 232 labs at 215 institutions for Yamanaka’s murine iPS cell vectors. The statistics speak for themselves. Although the Thomson and Yamanaka stem cell plasmids make up only 0.2% of Addgene’s total collection, they’ve accounted for over 10% of Addgene’s total plasmid requests since the beginning of 2008, Fan says.

Apparently, the IPSCs offer what scientists hoped for with ES cells:

“Biologically there’s no difference” between murine iPS and ES cells, says Jaenisch. Both can generate all the tissues in a mouse. Human iPS cells have not been as rigorously demonstrated to be quasi-equivalent to ES cells, and they won’t be, because doing so would require generating human babies or foetuses.

Unless scientists want to pursue Brave New World agendas such as fetal farming, it should mark the death knell for human cloning research:

No one doubts that iPS cells will eventually be generated from the cells of individuals with known medical history. That was the main advantage claimed for somatic cell nuclear transfer, a technically and ethically challenging procedure that has yet to be achieved in humans. For generating person-matched cells, iPS cells may be not only easier to use but perhaps superior, as they would share both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA with the original patient, whereas cells derived by somatic cell nuclear transfer carry only the same nuclear DNA.

Remember, folks, this is from “the scientists.” A new day has indeed dawned.