Therapeutic cloning has been successfully used to treat a disease for the
first time.
Mice with Parkinson's disease have been found to improve after receiving
their own modified cells.
American and Japanese researchers converted skin cells from the tails of the
sick animals into the dopamine-producing brain cells they lacked, and
grafted the genetically matched tissue back into the same mice.
The team leader, Lorenz Studer, of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer
Centre, New York, said although the procedure was technically complex and
had only been carried out on animals, it could provide an effective way to
avoid rejection of transplanted cells and treat a range of diseases in
humans. "This data suggests considerable therapeutic potential for the
future," Dr Studer said.
Therapeutic cloning, or somatic cell nuclear transfer, has never been
achieved in humans. Itt is controversial because it involves the creation of
a cloned embryo. A ban on therapeutic cloning in Australia was lifted in
2006.
Richard Boyd, of the Immunology and Stem Cell Laboratories at Monash
University, said the study, published in Nature Medicine, was an exciting
step. "This is very much proof of principle that one can create one's own
stem cells to potentially treat a patient-specific disease," he said,
although the process remained inefficient, and the results in the mice were
mixed.
Bob Williamson, of the Australian Academy of Science, also stressed that
mice were different to people, but said it represented an advance. "These
experiments could give great hope to those with Parkinson's disease, type 1
diabetes and cystic fibrosis," he said. "It also underlines how foolish
those people are who oppose nuclear transfer."
But Jack Martin, an emeritus professor of medicine at Melbourne's St
Vincent's Institute, said therapeutic cloning was unnecessary because of
developments in converting adult stem cells into embryonic-like stem cells.
The work was largely out of date, and no one would ever try to repeat it, he
said.
George Mellick, a Parkinson's disease expert at Griffith University,
Queensland, said cell transplants were unlikely to be able to fix the
diverse brain damage caused by the condition. "The idea that we may be able
to regenerate complex brain circuitry is, in my opinion, still some way
off," Professor Mellick said.
Source: Deborah Smith
Rayilyn Brown
Board Member AZNPF
Arizona Chapter National Parkinson's Foundation
rbrown@xxxxxxxxx
----------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:listserv@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn
