embryonic stem cell colonies from the lab of developmental biologist James Thompson
Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Used with permission © University of Wisconsin Board of Regents
South Korean research team led by Professor Hwang Woo-suk has created 11 lines of therapeutic human embryonic stem cells using adult cells of diseased and injured patients
A team of researchers led by Hwang Woo-suk from Seoul National University announced in February 2004 that this team had cloned a human embryo for the first time.
Today they announced that they had successfully created 11 lines of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) derived from donated eggs and the somatic (adult) cells of 11 patients with serious medical conditions.
Given that these stem cells are genetically virtually identical to those of the patients from whom the somatic cells were taken, if these stem cells can be coaxed into becoming the types of cells required for the treatment of each patient's condition, a major breakthrough in medical research and treatment will have been achieved.
According to May 20, 2005 article in the TIMES ONLINE entitled "Race to find new cures speeds up as Britain clones human embryo":
"The Korean group have produced 11 colonies of embryonic stem cells from 31 cloned blastocysts and 185 eggs. Their success rate was 16 times better than last year, when 242 eggs were needed to make a solitary stem cell line."
An article entitled "Hwang Clones Patient-Specific Stem Cells" about this breakthrough in the Korea Times raises some issues about the alleged inadequacy of the consent form used by the research team for the women who underwent hyperovulation treatments to generate the human oocytes (egg cells) used in the experiment.
Concern about ethical violations in the rush to collect enough eggs to do the experiments and possible treatments involving human embryonic stem cells was the subject of an April 18, 2005 Etopia Media Medical News Network interview with Massachusetts State Representative Betty Poirier. To hear that interview, click here.
Who is Gerald Schatten?
While Professor Hwang is clearly recognized in coverage of this event as the team leader and the person most responsible (and deserving of credit) for this achievement,
Gerald P. Schatten, Ph.D., is clearly running a close second in the race for prominence in this story.
According to his
bio on the "Our Experts" page of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center News Bureau:
"One of the country’s leading reproductive and developmental scientists, Dr. Gerald Schatten is vice chair for research development and professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences and cell biology and physiology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and deputy director for biotechnology development at the university-affiliated Magee-Womens Research Institute (MWRI).
"He leads the Pittsburgh Development Center (PDC), which focuses on developmental, reproductive and molecular medicine research from preconception through birth."
When Professor Hwang Woo-suk's team announced its claim about successful human cloning in February, 2004, Dr. Schatten was quoted in the
New Scientist article about that announcement:
"This is a spectacular discovery. This group deserves tremendous credit for this heroic achievement," says Gerald Schatten, director of the Pittsburgh Development Center at the Magee-Womens Research Institute. His team had published a widely cited article arguing that primates would be extremely hard to clone."
In an article in today's
Korea Times entitled
"Hwang Clones Patient-Specific Stem Cells", staff reporter Kim Tae-gyu writes:
"Professor Hwang said: 'We are bringing science a step forward towards the day when some of humankind’s most devastating diseases and injuries can be treated through the use of therapeutic stem cells.'
"His colleague, Professor Gerry Schatten, of the University of Pittsburgh, said: 'Now that Professor Hwang is able to derive cells from patients, we can understand the root cause of their diseases. The implication of this is extraordinary.'"
In an article published today on the
Richmond Times-Dispatch's
TimesDispatch.com web site, its staff writer A.J. Hostetler writes, in reference to the scientific paper prepared by Professor Hwang's research team announcing their latest breakthrough:
"'We think this paper adds tremendously to the scientific foundation,' said Gerald Schatten, a University of Pittsburgh cloning researcher who served as an adviser for the paper."
Dr. Schatten was prominently featured in tonight's segment, reported by
NBC Nightly News' Chief Health and Science Correspondent Robert Bazell about Dr. Hwang's work.
Dr. Schatten is a leader in the effort to reproductively clone non-human primates, a project closely integrated with Dr. Hwang's work
An April 11, 2003 article in
ScienceDaily entitled
"Failures In Primate Cloning May Signal Impossibility Of Human Reproductive Cloning" reported:
"Fundamental flaws in embryonic development may make therapeutic cloning of nonhuman primates difficult, and reproductive cloning of primates – nonhuman and human alike – impossible, a team of researchers from the Pittsburgh Development Center reports in this week's issue of the journal Science. Basic molecular obstacles were observed that blocked normal cell development despite using four different techniques of nuclear transfer, according to Gerald P. Schatten, Ph.D., senior author of the study and director of the Pittsburgh Development Center at the Magee-Womens Research Institute."
But in an October 21, 2004, article in
news@nature.com entitled
"Biologists come close to cloning primates—cloned monkey embryos transferred into mothers," by Helen Pearson, the reporter writes:
"US biologists have created cloned monkey embryos, and successfully transferred them into monkey mothers. Although none of the resulting pregnancies lasted more than a month, this is by far the closest scientists have come to cloning a primate.
"The study was unveiled yesterday by reproductive biologist Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Philadelphia. Schatten's group copied a technique used earlier this year to clone a human embryo and extract embryonic stem cells."
The article says that the change in fortune in Dr. Schatten's lab came "by adopting the Koreans' technique," as reported above.
South Korea and U.K. advance in global hESC competition, while California's efforts are snarled in litigation
At the same time that the South Korean team was announcing its latest breakthrough in hESC research, another team of researchers, this one at Newcastle University in the U.K., became the second group to successfully create a cloned human embryo.
As reported in the
TIMES ONLINE in an article entitled
"Race to find new cures speeds up as Britain clones human embryo,":
"BRITISH scientists have created a cloned human embryo for the first time, placing the country in the vanguard of a technology with the potential to cure conditions such as Parkinson’s, diabetes and paralysis.
"The Newcastle University team has become only the second to achieve the feat, crowning a momentous day that underlines the pace at which the science is moving.
"Their announcement came as the South Korean researchers who pioneered human cloning last year announced breakthroughs that bring its medical promise closer to reality."
Meanwhile, in California, where voters last November approved the sale of $3 billion in state bonds to finance human embryonic stem cell research, the actual sale of these bonds, and the actual funding of the research are now in limbo, awaiting the resolution of a law suit brought by litigants claiming that the handing over of $3 billion in state money to the Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee (ICOC) established by the passage of Proposition 71 to control the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine that would coordinate the stem cell research, violates the California Constitution's provision against providing funds to any organization that is "not under the exclusive management and control of the State as a state institution."
The authors of Proposition 71 specifically intended, and wrote provisions implementing their intentions into this initiative, to establish an organization that would be independent and outside the control of the State of California and its conflict of interest and open government laws.
As reported on the
California Politics Today web site in a May 11, 2005, article entitled
"California cannot sell $3 billion in embryonic stem cell research bonds until a lawsuit challenging its right to do so is resolved," no funding is yet available under the provisions of Proposition 71 for California stem cell researchers.
Dr. Hwang's team's technical success may heighten debate over the ethics of "therapeutic cloning"
Despite the technical breakthrough represented by this work by Dr. Hwang's team, and in addition to the moral qualms surrounding the harvesting of the vast quantities of eggs for this research, the question of the ethical standing of destroying human embryos to derive these and future human embryonic stem cells remains, and hovers over the entire enterprise, at least in the United States, like a dark cloud.
Intense efforts are now underway to devise methods of deriving human embryonic stem cells while not violating the morality of those who believe that taking the cell mass out of a days-old blastocyst to furnish forth a glass container with a fresh batch of human embryonic stem cells is ethically wrong.
Those interested in learning more about this issue are well-advised to take a look at a white paper entitled
"Alternative Sources of Pluripotent Stem Cells," prepared by a conscientious and thorough, but as-yet-uncredited, author and published in May, 2005, by
the President's Council on Bioethics.
This paper discusses in meticulous detail four ways that may allow for the generation of "a potential source of personalized, immuno-compatible regenerative therapies" without harming any human embryonic stem cells in the process. The upshot of the discussion is that the "dedifferentiation" of adult somatic cells offers the most ethically-attractive path to this result, just so long as the "dedifferentiation" process is not allowed to regress adult cells back beyond the "pluripotent" stage (where they can develop into any type of human cell) to the "totipotent" stage (where they could develop into an entire human being), thereby re-raising the same issues that these alternative methods of creating human embryonic stem cells are intended to resolve.
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