The Niche

More ES-cell research could pave way for less ES-cell research

Just last week, three labs reported on two techniques to reprogram human cells without permanently inserting the viral genes normally necessary to render cells pluripotent. At least one headline proclaimed that ES cells were obsolete.

If that were the case, one would expect yesterday’s move by President Obama to allow funding for more embryonic stem cell lines to be greeted with a yawn. It wasn’t. The removal of the funding ban made headlines both Friday and Monday. The International Society for Stem Cell Research characterized its scientists as ‘elated.’ Many scientists saw it as the end of a lost almost-decade of research progress.

US News and World Report has rounded up much of the coverage. See Nature’s coverage here.

Scientists are flooding into the race to reprogram adult cells to behave like embryonic stem cells (i.e. to make induced pluripotent stem cells), but they need embryonic stem cells for comparison.

James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin, the first researcher to derive human ES cells and one of the first to make human iPS cells, told me that with the new presidential policy, the newer ES cell lines will replace those made back before scientists had optimized the procedure, back when scientists were trying to figure out whether making human ES cells was possible at all.

“The way I grew them originally was pretty bad,” Thomson told me. “You would pick out the couple [attempts] that grew and passage them [treat them so they can multiply in culture]. The real gold standard will be cells that have been made under better conditions.”

And of course, the study of ES cells was what made the production of iPS cells possible at all. It was necessary to determine what genes could be used for reprogramming as well as the conditions in which reprogrammed cells could grow.

Scientists study the cells they believe are best able to answer their questions (and, at least in the US, they follow ethical guidelines put out by the National Academies). Already, the number of new ES cell lines being made is dwarfed by the number of iPS cell lines. While there will probably always be some questions that ES cells, and no other cell types, will answer, many scientists believe that the field will, of it’s own accord, move more and more toward iPS cells.

Those who want ES cell research to stop now should argue their case on moral, not utilitarian, grounds. The utilitarian argument is best answered by the scientific community.

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