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Autres Nouvelles
| Lab Studies Treatment's Dark Side |
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| Cancer Stem Cell | |
| Samedi, 23 Août 2008 14:11 | |
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There are no translations available. Source: Red Orbit In a gleaming lab high within Shriners Hospitals for Children Northern California, Paul Knoepfler is waging a different kind of fight against cancer. His target is a gene that causes tumors - and that can transform adult skin cells into versatile stem cells similar to those in embryos. Doctors who are hoping to use stem cells to one day cure paralysis and wipe out devastating diseases don't want to give their patients cancer along with the cure. Dr. Knoepfler, who just received a $2 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, is trying in his Sacramento lab to make eventual stem cell treatment safer. "I'm very optimistic," he said. "I don't think the hurdles we're facing are insurmountable." The prospects for stem cells, which can grow into every kind of tissue, are dazzling. But while cadres of researchers worldwide are focusing on spinal cord damage, diabetes, heart disease and countless other ills that stem cells might repair, Dr. Knoepfler and others are looking at what could go wrong. Stem cells could trigger immune system attacks. They could cause benign tumorsin dangerous places. They could cause cancer. "I think the public thinks you can just inject cells and have the patient feel better," said Dr. Joseph Wu, a Stanford University Medical School professor who is studying stem cells' potential to repair damaged hearts. He, too, is interested in how stem cell treatments might go wrong. Dr. Wu is one of the authors of a study published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It looks at how the immune system might stamp out stem cells before they can work. "It's just a reality check," he said of the mice-based study, which found that healthy immune systems quickly wiped out transplanted embryonic stem cells. When the mice were given drugs to suppress their immune response, the stem cells lasted longer. But suppressing the immune system in people increases the risk of dangerous infections, so ideally, doctors would want to find another way to make stem-cell treatments stick. "I don't think it's impossible," Dr. Wu said. "It just will take us time to figure things out." Dr. Knoepfler, a professor at UC Davis Medical School, is interested in both embryonic stem cells and a promising alternative that can be grown from adults, most commonly from skin cells. Those cells generally wouldn't be vulnerable to immune-system attack, because doctors likely would create them from a patient's own body. Instead, different problems emerge. Researchers turn adult tissue into these stem cells, called induced pluripotent stem cells, by activating four key genes to change a mature cell's normal behavior. One of those genes has been linked to cancer for decades.
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| Mise à jour le Lundi, 25 Août 2008 14:29 |