Word: stems
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...What's more, these advances are only the latest in a year's worth of exciting firsts in the field. Earlier this month, scientists in Portland successfully nurtured a line of embryonic stem cells from monkeys using the same process that created Dolly. The feat brings us one step closer to being able to generate patient-specific stem cells to treat diseases in human patients, since primates are evolutionarily closer to humans than mice, in whom the process was tested...
...That's why nearly every major stem cell lab began looking for an alternative approach, the most promising of which was to simply reprogram adult cells without eggs or embryos. "When I started this work, I thought it would be a 20-year, not a few-year problem," says Thomson. But sometimes science can be surprising, and in this case, all it took to accomplish a complex biological time warp was a handful of genes that suppress cells from dividing and maturing...
...Already, the process, called direct reprogramming, is changing the field - on several levels. Ian Wilmut, the pioneering biologist responsible for cloning the first mammal, Dolly, has announced that he will no longer use the cloning method that made him famous to generate stem cells. "Changing cells from a patient directly into stem cells has got so much more potential," he says...
...generating stem cells is suddenly possible for anyone with a basic background in molecular biology. No special expertise in handling chromosomes, nuclei or eggs is needed...
...Finally, the promise and potential of directly reprogrammed cells calls into question whether embryonic stem cells are useful any more. Why go to the trouble of creating embryos when stem cells can be coaxed directly from properly manipulated cells? At least for the time being, says Dr. Douglas Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, embryonic stem cell research should continue, since it's not clear yet how robust and safe stem cell therapies from other methods might be. "My answer to that question comes from a different perspective," he says. "Not from a scientific or political...