Lecture 10 (Cloned Embryonic Stem Cells)

Question 1

What are the advantages and disadvantages associated with cloned embryonic stem cell transplants?

Answer 1

Cloned embryonic stem cell transplants would be autogenic. So possibility of rejection of stem cell transplants as foreign tissues is very low. This is the main (only) reason for using cloned ESCs.
Disadvantages include the enormous cost, many technical challenges, could not be used for genetic diseases and the ethical issues are a nightmare.

Question 2

Describe the plans to use induced pluripotent stem cells in a clinical application in Japan.

Answer 2

Scientists led by ophthalmologist Masayo Takahashi at the Riken Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe have just stated using iPS cells in a human trial using patients with macular degeneration

Question 3

Describe the principle behind stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP) cells, and the controversy surrounding the associated research.

Answer 3

This was a huge story which broke in the media last year when a paper by Obokata was published in Nature claiming that stem cells could be induced from somatic cells by dipping them in a weak acid for 25 minutes.

This generated huge media interest around the world and was hailed as an enormous breakthrough in SC technology since these cells would be much safer to use than iPSCs. However, several groups around the world tried without success to replicate this protocol.

After an extensive investigation it was revealed that Obokata had fabricated a lot of the data in the paper and the paper was retracted.