Japanese Researchers Make First Brain Tissues From Stem Cells
Michael J. Fox and other sufferers of degenerative neurological diseases rejoice! Japanese scientists at the government-backed research institute Riken have created the first functioning human brain tissues from stem cells, the first step in curing everything from strokes to multiple sclerosis to paralysis. Even better, there may be a chance that these tissues could come from non-embryonic stem cells, which means its research could possibly be continued in the U.S. as well.
Creating actual tissue instead of just cells is an important step since tissue transplants have a better chance of stimulating greater functional recovery in patients. For the moment, Riken researchers are still getting most of their newly minted cerebral cortices from embryonic cells, a big moral and ethical moral battleground over here. But the researchers said that they had harvested some from “induced pluripotent stem cells,” artificially made cells from adult cell cultures – like skin. If so, hopefully one of the last hurdles to growing brains has fallen. [Japan Today]
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@andyo – most religious people don’t care about this.
There are a few additional points to consider.
First – the research (like *any* medical research) is costly and time consuming. To secure funding for it is usually difficult. Here for example (Australia), many startup pharmaco’s do initial testing and sell to bigger companies because they simply can’t afford the half billion odd dollar cost it takes to push a pill to market. With something like this, the cost for actually obtaining a marketable product would be even more astronomical. In this situation, being “second” to market is often an awful lot cheaper, even though you’ve usually got to have one or two clever patent lawyers.
Secondly – This kind of research is legal in the USA. I don’t understand where the fundies come into this? If anything, have a cry to the politicians about how out of touch they are for even trying to reference this group of society.
On another topic, someone like Goglen has a problem which probably won’t be cured (at least not “first”) by stem cell research. More likely he’ll be cured by things like rotuxin, which are the next wave of anti-cancer drug, but still have some amazing effects on things like rheumatoid arthritis and certain neural degenerative diseases. This situation irritates me a little because it’s not as though there’s a magic bullet around any corner. The answer for oncology, mental illness, degenerative neural diseases and all manner of other things are likely to be complex and varied. We’re about as close to fixing some things through somatic cell gene therapy as we are actual useful products from embryonic stem cells.
That being said – this is a marvellous development still.