Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Stem cells from brains

This BBC report discusses using brain stem cells to cure Diabetes.

Since it's hard to biopsy brains of live people, and since brains in dead people deteriorate very very quickly, I'm not sure why this is supposed to be a better idea than using umbillical cord cells, or fat cells, etc.

However, one paragraph caught my eye...

Scientists have already been looking at using stem cells taken from embryos to treat diabetes.

These are primitive "master" cells that can be programmed to become many kinds of tissue.

However, there have been concerns that these cells can turn cancerous, are difficult to work with in the laboratory and raise ethical dilemmas.

Oh, you mean you didn't know stem cells from embryos can turn cancerous? Yup. a major problem. and another problem is overgrowth. I first ran across this last week in Science News (no link) where they noted that if you grow stem cells too long in a lab they turn cancerous, and that this was also a problem with adult stem cells...(usually there are more adult stem cells to start out with, so they don't have to grow as long, so there is less cancer).

So next time you read about all those wonderful cures from embryonic stem cells, remember...they not only don't mention all the actual cures from adult stem cells but this little problem with cancer.

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