BERGEN COUNTY RIGHT TO LIFE

Stem cell breakthrough uses no embryos

According to AP, scientists have made ordinary human skin cells take on the chameleon-like powers of embryonic stem cells, a startling breakthrough. The "direct reprogramming" technique avoids the swarm of ethical, political and practical obstacles that have stymied attempts to produce human stem cells by cloning embryos.

Laboratory teams on two continents report success in a pair of landmark papers released today. The new work is being published online by two journals, Cell and Science. The Cell paper is from a team led by Dr. Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University; the Science paper is from a team led by Junying Yu, working in the lab of in stem-cell pioneer James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"This work represents a tremendous scientific milestone — the biological equivalent of the Wright Brothers` first airplane," said Dr. Robert Lanza, chief science officer of Advanced Cell Technology, which has been trying to extract stem cells from cloned human embryos.

Both researchers reported creating cells that behaved like stem cells in a series of lab tests. Each used viruses to ferry four genes into the skin cells. Yamanaka reprogrammed skin cells from the face of an unidentified 36-year-old woman, and Thomson`s team worked with foreskin cells from a newborn. Two of the four genes he used were different from Yamanaka`s recipe.

Thomson, who was working his way from embryonic to fetal to adult cells, said he`s still analyzing his results with adult cells.

"People didn`t know it would be this easy," Thomson said. "Thousands of labs in the United States can do this, basically tomorrow."

Tissue made from the cells should be transplantable into that person without fear of rejection. Scientists emphasize that any such payoff would be well in the future, and that the more immediate medical benefits would come from basic research in the lab. This technique requires disrupting the DNA of the skin cells, which creates the potential for developing cancer. But the DNA disruption is just a byproduct of the technique, and experts said they believe it can be avoided.

Many scientists say the cloning technique has proven too expensive and cumbersome in its current form to produce stem cells routinely for transplants.

Scottish researcher Ian Wilmut, famous for his role in cloning Dolly the sheep a decade ago, told London`s Daily Telegraph that he is giving up the cloning approach to produce stem cells and plans to pursue direct reprogramming instead.

The new technique doesn`t require a supply of unfertilized human eggs, which are hard to obtain for research and subjects the women donating them to a surgical procedure. Using eggs also raises the ethical questions of whether women should be paid for them.

In cloning, those eggs are used to make embryos from which stem cells are harvested. But that destroys the embryos, which has led to political opposition from President Bush, the Roman Catholic church and others.

Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called the new work "a very significant breakthrough in finding morally unproblematic alternatives to cloning. ... I think this is something that would be readily acceptable to Catholics."

Another advantage of direct reprogramming is that it would qualify for federal research funding, unlike projects that seek to extract stem cells from human embryos, noted Doug Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

The White House lauded the papers, saying such research is what President Bush was advocating when he twice vetoed legislation to pave the way for taxpayer-funded embryo research.