“Latest Stem Cells News”

Austria

In the debate on embryonic stem cell research, or its regulations, it seems that the wind is changing both in the US, where President Obama has just changed the rigid guidelines laid out by his predecessor George W. Bush, and in Austria. “There was no pre-arranged organization, however, we were not against it,” said Christiane Druml, the president of the Bioethical Commission, presenting their new recommendations on March 23. A large majority, “including 17 out of 25 women”, believe that embryonic stem cell research is “scientifically relevant, morally legitimate, and worthy of support” and recommended a substantial easing of the laws. Five members of the commission proposed the laws to be stricter (these five supporters were not present at the meeting and one of their supporters, philosopher Guenther Poeltner, criticized their absence from the audience). The previous majority was overturned. In 2002 the Austrian government almost completely blocked the entire EU research program because it called for financing for embryonic stem cells. Now they are moving in the opposite direction.
The Commission suggested: a) the use of excess embryos from in vitro fertilization procedures; b) “therapeutic cloning”; c) hybrid human and animal embryos.

Legislative uncertainty halts research.

The commission does not only want liberal laws, but also clearer laws: “Current legislative uncertainty has been an obstacle to the development of research” explained Ulrich Koertner (Evangelical Theology, University of Vienna). Although part of the legal uncertainty has been overcome, molecular biologist Erwin Wagner (IMP) two years ago was the first and only scientist to perform experiments with embryonic stem cells in Austria. This was possible under past laws by importing embryonic stem cells from the US because it was not clear if they could be produced in Austria (the minority party voted to ban production and importation).

Now their production could be authorized. Their source would be “excess embryos”, which go not lead to great ethical problems. Reserve embryos not used by medically assisted fertilization programs are frozen for ten years and then destroyed. The explicit liberalization of “therapeutic cloning” is a more delicate issue (the current law is controversial). In this case embryos would be produced for the sole purpose of creating stem cells (and then the embryos would be destroyed). Finally, “hybrid” embryos, which are currently legal only in Great Britain, could become legal (the Commission is only an advisory body). This would constitute a small revolution, which would then give the final call to researchers. Until now, no one has followed Wagner’s example, and not just for legislative reasons, but more because embryonic stem cell research requires training, and lots of funding.

I just had a birthday, and to honor such occasions, my sister always gives me silver. Not just any silver: It’s our parents’ simple wedding flatware pattern, which Margaret collects for me, one piece at a time. Over the years that the slender boxes have appeared, I’ve wondered if any of it is from the full service for 12 that I pulled in a suitcase through Manhattan’s Diamond District and sold one dreadful day 25 years ago.

It had been my assignment to sell it —- that, and a ring of Margaret’s, one of mine and, right off our mother’s finger, her engagement ring and platinum wedding band. The sum received was probably a quarter of their monetary worth, and nothing near their emotional value, but it financed two more weeks of home care for our mother, an Alzheimer’s patient. After five years of caring for her at home, we had run through the family savings.

It was a few years before the sale of the silver that I first wrote about us, in a 1983 magazine article that, impossible as it may seem now, introduced Alzheimer’s disease to millions of people who didn’t know what it was, including the seasoned magazine editor to whom I first pitched the story. Last Sunday, HBO began a three-night series, produced by California’s first lady, Maria Shriver, about a disease that now needs no introduction.

When I first wrote about Alzheimer’s, I searched out some of the best minds of the time, including Lewis Thomas, the great science writer, former dean of Yale Medical School and then-chancellor of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He called Alzheimer’s disease “the disease of the century” because, he said, “of all the health problems in the 20th century, this one is the worst.”

That quote got people’s attention, as did the words “angry, incompetent, hostile and incontinent,” which is how I described my mother. She was then 51, two years younger than I am now. I exposed her for who she had become in exchange for the attention I hoped the article might bring for her disease.

In years that followed, congressional hearings were held, state task forces were convened and city committees were formed. Research dollars were allotted as well. But those were the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was president, and despite the fact that embryonic stem cell research had been conducted in the U.S. since the middle of the 20th century, contributing to such wonders as vaccines for both rubella and polio, it was rebranded and became strongly associated with abortion. In the years that followed, despite the well-known fact that stem cell research was the most promising path to finding cures for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and other diseases, this country allowed the personal beliefs of the anti-abortion forces to become public policy. And that lasted a very long time.

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Flip past the big photo on page 65 of beaming software magnate Bill Gates and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and there, on page 67, beside a picture of U.S. president Barack Obama, is a microscope image of a cell.

That induced embryonic stem cell has vaulted Toronto scientist Andras Nagy into this high-flying company in Scientific Magazine’s inaugural Top 10 awards for work in science-related endeavours.

“It’s an enormous honour and a recognition of the science we do in the lab, and what we do in Mount Sinai, and what we do in Toronto and what we do in Canada,” says Nagy, an investigator at Mount Sinai Hospital who nabbed his award for a genetic coup, announced in February, that may well change the face of stem-cell biology.

Nagy’s team at Mount Sinai’s Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute won a global race to find a safe way to transform adult skin cells into embryonic-like stem cells.

While it had been shown before that this reprogramming could be achieved, past methods had dangerously contaminated the resulting stem cell, Nagy explains.

He says under previous methods, the new stem cells, which like the real embryonic version can transform into any tissue type, still contained the reprogramming material and the DNA of the viruses used to transport it into the adult cell’s nucleus.

His method, however, enables scientists to introduce the reprogramming material without a viral transporter and then draw it back out again after it has accomplished the transformation.

“In effect, Nagy and his colleagues had, for the first time, created the equivalent of embryonic stem cells that were uncontroversially ethical, safe and efficient,” the magazine wrote in the June issue, released today.

Using patients’ own transformed cells for organ repair would allow them to avoid the immune system rejection that plagues all person-to person transplantation.

Nagy, for one, sees a legitimate fit to his prestigious Obama pairing.

“The heavy science that we do at Mount Sinai for humanity is there beside (Obama’s) massive, massive message that science is important for society and the economy,” Nagy said.

Just as Barack Obama has loosened the regulations on embryonic stem cell research in the USA, the Austrian Commission of Bioethics (which advises the government) has decided to implement more liberal regulation. Today in Austria it is prohibited to produce embryonic stem cells, but it is allowed to import them from abroad. These cells are expensive and research is hindered by high costs. The majority of the Commission has advised, with a 17 to 5 vote, that the use of excess embryonic stem cells from assisted fertilization procedures be made legal. If they are not used, after a certain period of time, the embryos are disposed of, and therefore it makes more sense to use them for research. The council rejected a possible production of embryos specifically to be used for research.

After US President Barack Obama opened up to embryonic stem cell research, “we will have an America that will begin to run ,and an Italy that risks becoming a parasite,” were the fears expressed by pharmacologist Elena Cattaneo, director of the stem cell research center of the University of Milan.

Obama’s attitude, observed the Italian researcher today during a meeting in Milan, “is very positive. He has opened the door to research,” she said to Adnkronos Salute, “but with caution, without crying miracle. With the idea that perhaps tomorrow future generations will be able to benefit from the results that will be obtained.”

The hope, said Cattaneo, is that these choices “will mark an opening to research in general, not only for embryonic stem cells. He has recognized their strength.” From a practical standpoint now “in the US, much more investment will be available, studies will be more daring to accept intellectual and experimental challenges, while Italy risks remaining behind. Unless we will be able to benefit from those studies, as long as we are capable of doing so.”

A law has been proposed again to the U.S. Senate to allow for federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research. Democratic Senator Tom Harkin and Republican colleague Arlen Specter declared that the proposal allows for federal funds to finance research done using embryonic stem cells derived from leftover embryos from fertility clinics.

“It is the same bill proposed and approved by the House and the Senate in 2007, but vetoed by President George W. Bush,” was read in their statement to the press.

President Barack Obama promised to eliminate limits on federal funding imposed on research.

“For too long politics have slowed research on treatments that could save the lives of many citizens. President Barack Obama has promised to eliminate the restrictions imposed by Bush, and I hope that he does so soon. Furthermore, I hope this is protected by a federal law so it will not be affected by future changes in the administration,” added Harkin.

The proposed law is also supported by Democratic Senators Edward Kennedy and Dianne Feinstein, and Republican Orrin Hatch.