Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Stem Cells Up and Downs

As many of us know Stem Cells have been a very controversial but interesting topic for the past few decades.  Stem cells have been shown to be able to do a multitude of amazing things in the human body.  The problem with these stem cells, at least the embryonic version, is one of the only ways to get them is from the amniotic fluid of a newly growing baby.  Another type of stem cell is found in some adult tissues such as bone marrow but has much less ability to give rise to other kinds of cells.
            Recent advances in stem cell technology have given rise to induced-pluripotent stem cells by genetic reprogramming.  Scientists can take a regular adult cell and by reprogramming the cell can be able to inject this and other cells in to the affected area to heal the problem.  So far this has seen promise but scientists are not sure if any adverse effects will be seen in adult humans.
            The most recent breakthrough was seen about a month ago when scientists found that if you subjected a cell to physical stress then the cell would regress back into a regular stem cell.  Putting regular blood cells into an acid bath for a certain amount of time would eventually turn these blood cells back into stem cells.  This would be a huge breakthrough in the world of stem cell science.  This would take away the controversy of using embryonic cells and the donors for these cells could come straight from the patients themselves!

            This would be a huge breakthrough for the world of stem cells but in even more recent news the scientists that have been trying to prove this idea and replicate the results have been having a extremely hard time.  This has brought the plausibility and the reliability of these results into question.  It looks as though this time we will have to wait a little longer for an end all, be all in finding perfect stem cell therapy.

Alex Sroczynski

6 comments:

  1. This is interesting, I've heard quite a bit about stem cells but not of this research. That would be amazing if they were able to replicate and prove this finding of just having to subject the cells to physical stress. I wonder why they are not able to replicate the study with any success, was it only done one time successfully?

    Posted by Morgan Matuszko

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    1. As far as Ive seen, yes, the test was only done successfully once, and may not have even been done successfully. The scientists have been trying to find out if the findings were fake or if they have not been replicated yet.

      Alex Sroczynski

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  2. I love the idea of stem cells and even more the research going into them. The science community is making big waves with their attempts to use non-embroynic stem cells. Finding a way to reprogram adult cells to become induce-pluripotent cells or better yet totipotent cells would revolutionize medicine. Excellent post, and thanks for passing this information on!

    Max Liner

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  3. This is great to hear that we can regenerate stem cells by differentiated cells. I heard that scientists have also found other ways to modify differentiated cells back to induced-pluripotent stem cells, such as by using different pH solution. What do you think about this method?

    Posted by Yim Hui

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  4. This is actually really fascinating, and opens up all sorts of possibilities in terms of stem cell treatments. Do you have any links to the articles? I would be interested in reading more on this topic. This really changes the future of stem cell research and makes it so much more accessible. I can't wait to see what they are able to do with this new access to an abundant source of stem cells.

    Posted by: Kirk MacKinnon

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    1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-25917270 This is the first article I found claiming that it worked, and this http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/acid-bath-stem-cell-study-under-investigation/ is the next article I found saying the findings were under investigation. Would be awesome for this to be real, but I'm not too sure yet!

      Alex Sroczynski

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