Lead Into Gold: Drugs Used to Create IPSCs!

A big proof of principle advance has been announced on the IPSC front. Human brain cells have been reverted to an embryonic-like state with drugs—and without using any cancer-causing gene, reducing the need for virus vectors. From the story:

A major advance in transforming one kind of cell into another is reported today that will likely to render plans to clone human embryos redundant in the quest for revolutionary new treatments…Now a team at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Germany, reports in the journal Cell Stem Cell that they have used drugs to help turn brain cells from an adult back into embryo like stem cells.

And what does this potentially mean?

While Yamanaka introduced four genes, at least two linked with cancer, to turn back the clock so they became more embryo like, Dr Ding uses just two genes, along with drugs, reducing the need for viruses and doing away with the cancer gene.

Dr Ding believes that, someday, chemical cocktails might be used instead of viruses to reprogram cells for cell-based therapy. One cocktail of small molecules would be used to revert specialized adult cells back to an earlier developmental stage, and then a second cocktail would differentiate the cell into the type needed to replace diseased cells in any organ or tissue. “This study is a proof of principle that this kind of approach is possible,” he says.

So adult stem cells seem to be the therapeutic answer whether made from pluripotent stem cells or in their own right.

In any event, if stem cells for drug testing and therapies are the goal, human cloning is indeed redundant and should be banned. But don’t hold your breath. In my view, stem cells were as much pretext as purpose behind the cloning drive. But at least now that will be exposed.