‘member that time i talked about stem cells? ohhh, i ‘member! hey cell mates, julian here for dnews. we’ve been cranking out episodes for fouryears now. can you believe it? over the course of the next few days, thehosts from dnews are going to celebrate our birthday by having a look back and revisitingtopics from our first days with the show. i have talked about a ton of fascinating stuffbut i still remember my first episode, when a fresh-faced and over-enthusiastic me couldn’twait to tell you about an exciting new experimental
treatment involving stem cells, cells whichcan take the form of other tissues and hold the promise of regenerative medicine. since then, what’s been going on in theworld of stem cells? well, a lot. like, a lot a lot. hardly a week goes by without stem cells makinga headline for one thing or another. here’s a brief sample of some from the lasttwo years. scientists successfully created mouse eggsfrom stem cells that produce healthy young pups when fertilized.
stem cell therapies on people with traumaticbrain injuries appear to reduce the body’s neuroinflammatory response, saving brain tissue. and cardiologists are testing stem cells asa treatment for a type of heart failure that kills half its victims within 5 years andpreviously had no treatments at all. oh, did i say those were headlines from thelast two years? i meant the last two weeks. so obviously the pace and variety of stemcell research is immense. looking back to my first episode, though,we focused on what was then a new treatment for vision loss caused by macular degeneration;that’s when part of your retina starts to
deteriorate. it wasn’t the first time stems cells hadbeen used to treat macular degeneration. in fact, a month after my dnews debut, a reportpublished in the lancet followed up on 18 cases of patients who had stem cell procedureson their eyes up to three years prior. the patients showed no signs of rejectionor tumor growth, and for 13 of them their vision had improved on average about 3 lineson the eye chart test. you know the one with the huge e and thena bunch of smudges? anyway, the story i covered was special becauseit was the first use of induced pluripotent stem cells, or ipscs, on a human.
the cells were made from a patient’s ownskin that had been turned back into stem cells using a virus that delivered new dna. before that, scientists used embryonic stemcells which may have a risk of rejection to go along with a thorny ethical dilemma. sadly, the woman who received the inducedstem cell treatment remains the only person with that distinction. the researchers had a second procedure planned,but halted it when two small mutations in the cells made them worry they would leadto tumor growth. that hasn’t been the end for ipscs; in factthey’ve become invaluable for laboratory
work. they’ve been useful for drug screeningsand scientists can study diseases by introducing mutations to the cells using the breakthroughgene editing technique crispr. and because ipscs are so similar to embryonicstem cells but can be produced easily and ethically, stem cells are in a much greatersupply than ever before. in fact, their creator, shinya yamanaka, isn’tresting on his nobel laurels. using a protein called bmp, or bone morphogeneticprotein , he discovered a way to turn adult cellsinto stem cells more frequently. this can increase the supply and further accelerateand diversify the research.
so two years on, nobody else has receivedtreatment using induced pluripotent stem cells. but that doesn’t mean there’s been noprogress. scientists are finding new and interestinguses for them all the time, but they’re going slow and making sure the treatment won’tdo more harm than good. like we always say, more research is needed. we all having embarrassing pictures of uswhen we were younger, but i’m not ashamed. there is my first ever dnews episode rightthere. epic flail! are there any other old dnews episodes thatstick out in your mind that you’d like us
to follow up on? go ahead tell us about them in the comments,subscribe for more and we'll see you next time on dnews.
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