So I’m a bit behind and only now just catching up from being away last week. No doubt you’ve heard all the stem cell news from last week. Three labs in Japan and Boston-Cambridge managed to reprogram adult skin cells from mice into cells resembling embryonic stem cells by simply inserting four genes.
Here’s a quick roundup of some of the reactions and follow up stories. Alex Palazzo from Harvard, over at The Daily Transcript, seemed quite impressed with the results, but later cautioned about possible risks of uncontrolled cell growth. The New York Times also had a skeptical piece
about the therapeutic potential of the new approach.
The Globe had a slightly related “story”:https://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/diseases/articles/2007/06/07/reluctance_of_egg_donors_stymies_harvard_efforts/ about how a Harvard project to produce embryonic stem cells from the cells of patients with specific diseases is stalling because women don’t want to donate their eggs. The piece gets into the ethical debate about whether women should be paid to provide their eggs for research.
Finally, the story of the timing of these papers has also cropped up. I normally admire the science reporting in the Washington Post, but I was quite disappointed in this “story”:https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/09/AR2007060901463.html from yesterday. It quotes people speculating that the release of the three papers one day before the US House of Representatives was scheduled to vote on stem cell legislation was more than just coincidence. Of course, the article quotes other people, not just the Nature spokesperson, saying that the speculation is unfounded. Still, such speculation is meant for the lunchroom or even blogs, but not the pages of a national newspaper!
Speaking of timing, in time for the big stem cell “meeting”:https://www.isscr.org/ happening in Australia next week, NPG recently launched “Nature Reports Stem Cells”:https://www.nature.com/stemcells/index.html, a website with stem cell news, research, events, a “blog”:https://blogs.nature.com/reports/theniche/2007/06/how_can_journals_improve_peer.html#more and even an online journal club.