2021-09-27 21:05:41
One more week we will delve into a subject that already has a considerable history in the world of biomedical science, and that is still current. This is stem cell research, which held so much promise some two decades ago, and still holds so much promise today.
at the beginning of the century XXI, the topic of stem cell therapy for degenerative diseases raised passionate debates, not only about the science behind it, but also about the ethics of its use. I even think I remember that even Almodóvar, Pedro! premiered a film titled: All about mothers. Or was it all about my mother? Be that as it may, in November 2001, I was saying the following here about this matter.
With these optimistic and, why not say it, naive words, I ended the popular article, which until today I have not published in the form of a Podcast. As you surely know, during these two decades there have been no groundbreaking advances that allow the use of stem cells to cure some of the aforementioned diseases.
The only therapy approved for use by the health authorities, in 2016, is the transplantation of hematopoietic stem cells, which can come from blood, bone marrow or umbilical cord. Hematopoietic stem cells are the origin of all blood cells.
The use of stem cells has also been studied to repair the damage produced in the heart after a myocardial infarction, or to accelerate the healing of fistulas resistant to other treatments. However, there is still no stem cell-based therapy that can cure or alleviate other diseases caused by excess cell mortality. For example, it has not been possible to cure type 1 diabetes, nor Parkinson’s disease, nor Alzheimer’s disease. Today, stem cell therapy has not yet delivered what it promised two decades ago.
And this, despite the fact that important advances have been made in the area of research. Perhaps the most impressive of these is the generation of inducible pluripotent stem cells, known as iPSCs. This breakthrough, published in 2006, earned its inventor, Japanese professor Shinya Yamanaka, a Nobel Prize in 2012.
Inducible pluripotent stem cells are derived from adult cells engineered by genetic engineering to force them to turn on four genes that normally adult cells do not have working all at the same time. These four genes generate four proteins that are transcription factors, Sox2, Oct4, Klf4 and c-Myc, which reprogram the functioning of the other genes in adult cells and get them to start working.
the genes that make a cell a stem cell are working, and the genes that make a cell a differentiated adult cell stop working, be it of any type, epithelial, hepatic, nervous, etc. The word pluripotent in the name of these cells means that they have multiple potentiality to become any type of adult cell again, including the type from which the stem cell is derived, but also different adult cell types. As we see, the generation of iPSC cells invalidated what was believed to be true: that once differentiated and adult, the cells cannot go back. While this is what usually happens in nature, laboratory manipulations have confirmed that cells could indeed go backwards once differentiated. This, however, was already suspected after studying multiple types of cancers, which are made up of less differentiated cells, in general, that is, less adult, than those of the tissue from which they come.
The technology for generating pluripotent stem cells has made it possible to circumvent the ethical obstacles that prevented the isolation of stem cells from human embryos. These were, prior to this procedure, the only source of pluripotent stem cells. Now, on the other hand, embryonic stem cells can be generated from, as I said, adult cells, obviating the need to generate embryos through in vitro fertilization. However, despite the boost that this technology has brought to stem cell research, we unfortunately still lack the regenerative therapies that these cells continue to promise.
The lesson that I humbly draw from this review of the recent history of research on this, and on other topics as well, is that while the promises may be achievable, and not pipe dreams, existing only in the imagination of scientists, a enormous amount of work, commitment, tenacity, will and intelligence on the part of the researchers to finally turn into reality what the research promises at its inception. The one who resists wins (as another Nobel laureate said, this time Spanish, Camilo José Cela) and the one who loses is that he has not resisted. Science and those of us who believe in it and want it to be adequately financed, in order to win, we must also resist and insist. And it is that science is not only a matter of scientists, who already do enough to work in the difficult and competitive conditions of universities and research centers. Science, like finance, we are all, and it is for everyone.
Jorge Laborda (09/12/2021)
Works by Jorge Laborda.
Your defenses against coronavirus
Your defenses against coronavirus
Deflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
Deflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
Deflamed immunology: An introduction to the immune system and its pathologies
Kilo of Science Volume XII eBook
Kilo of Science Volume XII Paper
Kilo of Science Volume I. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume II. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume III. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume IV. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume V. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume VI. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume VII. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume VIII. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume IX. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume X. Jorge Laborda
Kilo of Science Volume XI. Jorge Laborda
Matrix of homeopathy
Chained circumstances. Ed.Lulu
Chained circumstances. Amazon
One moon, one civilization. Why the Moon tells us that we are alone in the Universe
One moon, one civilization. Why the Moon tells us that we are alone in the Universe
One Moon one civilization why the Moon tells us we are alone in the universe
The thousand and one bases of ADN and other science stories
Adenius Fidelius
The intelligence funnel and other essays
The gods have been cloned
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