Stem-cell skin creams, a San Diego collaboratory, and legal blogs
An article in Tuesday’s LA Times patiently explains that expensive bottles of skin cream sold in doctors’ offices and online do not actually contain stem cells. They don’t have much science either. Other companies are marketing services to store stem cells in menstrual blood. The uterine lining is highly regenerative, but the science is early.
In San Diego, four independent institutions are planning to build a common $115-million facility for stem cell science. Teri Somers covers it well, and some commentators are passionately against. The California Stem Cell Report has comments on this, plus a lively discussion on the meaning of “trivial” in terms of the contribution the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine claimed to have made and actually made to research leading to clinical trials. (The posts are on April 17 and April 15) Back in August, Nature Reports Stem Cells conducted a survey on how recipients of innovation grants intended to use them, noting that the Institute had been kept from disbursing most of the funds it had been awarded)
Keep reading for most posts that caught my eye
A blog entitled “WARF is evil” castigates the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, claiming the agency obstructs human embryonic stem cell research through the patents it has successfully defended against challenge. The blog has drawn a share of careful rebuttals.
On a related note, this month’s Nature Biotechnology (subscription required), has an article explaining the US patent office’s decision to uphold the WARF patents. It describes “new rules of engagement in the battle for dominance in stem cell IP”, patents are likely to be based on cells’ physical characteristics such as gene expression rather than function. In the same issue, you’ll see a profile on Dan Ravicher, the lawyer-activist that launched the attack on the WARF patents. (For the scientist side, see our commentary by Jeanne Loring )
An interesting grab-bag of items was posted recently by the Center for Genetics and Society, a non-profit that worries about research cloning’s potential to lead to reproductive cloning.
Another blog from the center complains that one of our recent commentaries called “What comes after iPS?”does not point out that no one has yet produced human embryonic stem cells through nuclear transfer and that doing so requires using human eggs and creating a blastocyst (presumably, most people reading Nature Reports Stem Cells would know this, but point taken). What the critique fails to mention is the main point of the commentary: that directly reprogrammed cells will transform not just regenerative medicine but also cell biology.
Finally, thanks to Hematopoiesis for naming Nature Reports Stem Cells FAQs number one. I worked really hard on those (and so did those kind experts I harassed for feedback). They are one-year old now, so I’ll be spending the next couple weeks rereading them and bringing them up to date.
Comments
At my knowledge, a great lot of money on studying staminal cells, even in … skin cream as well as in menstrual blood, accounts for the reason there is an overlooked bias in such as research articles! In fact, in performing staminal cell researches in whatever tissue ALL scientists overlook both an inherited mithocondrial cytopathy, I termed Congenital Acidosic Enzyme-Metabolic Histangiopathy and Biophysical-Semeiotic Constitutions 1-6; See my earlier Letter on Whashington Post: URL http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/comments/display?contentID=AR2007041101736&start=41 . For example: accordingly, type 2 diabetes is a major problem worldwide, a real epidaemic. Independent of different countries, in recent decades diabetes prevalence has increased rapidly over time among both developed and developing populations, nothwithstanding a lot of camapigns of prevention. Surely, genetic factors alone cannot explain these patterns. However, as allows me to state my 52-yeqr-long clinical experience (www.semeioticabiofisica.it), an individual, without diabetic “AND” dyslipidaemic biophysical-semeiotic constitutions, can not be involved by type 2 diabets, at all 1-6. Certainly, rapid changes in lifestyle and risk factors such as obesity, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, tobacco smoking, a.s.o., acting on people with diabetic and dyslipidaemic constitution may cause, AT FIRST, Pre-Metabolic Syndrome, then, over years or decades, metabolic syndrome 2, 6, IGT, and finally type 2 diabetes. In a few words, all around the world, e.g., the war against diabetes mellitus and its well-known and harmful so-called complications, as well as the war against all other serious and common human diseases, is nowadays possible, also utilizing possibly staminal cells of “whatever” origin, exclusively by means of a primary prevention, which must be perform at the bed-side, i.e., clinically, on a very large scale, using the simple stethoscope. In addition, we must in the future utilize staminal cell, of whatever origin, of individuals not involved by above-cited biophysical semeiotic constitutions! In other words, in both primary prevention and screening programme for whatever disease, including DM and its complications, and cancer, we need efficacious clinical tools to obtain the best results, avoiding, e.g., to use staminal cell with impaired mitochondria. Really, early diagnosis must certainly be established in asymptomatic patients, who, for example, are evolving slowly towards diabetes mellitus, i.e. long time before disease onset, in order to avoid the well known, severe complications. In fact, to prevent these diabetic complications, including diabetic retinopathy, on very large scale, it is extremely necessary that doctors use a clinical tool, reliable in diagnosing early diabetes mellitus stages, from initial stages, i.e., biophysical-semeiotic constitutions, and then the Pre-Metabolic Syndrome 1-6, usefull particularly in selecting “appropriate” stem cells to be utilized. As I wrote formerly in PLOS, physicians can fortunately utilize bedside clinical methods reliable in ascertain the truth of articles published in famous peer reviews.
References
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2 Stagnaro Sergio, Stagnaro-Neri Marina. Introduzione alla Semeiotica Biofisica. Il Terreno oncologico. Travel Factory SRL., Roma, 2004
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4 Stagnaro S., Istangiopatia Congenita Acidosica Enzimo-Metabolica. Una Patologia Mitocondriale Ignorata. Gazz Med. It. - Arch. Sci. Med. 144, 423,1985 Infotrieve.
5 Stagnaro S. Diet and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes. N Engl J Med. 2002 Jan 243464:297-298. [MEDLINE].
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Posted by: Sergio Stagnaro | April 26, 2008 07:10 AM