godchaser

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Therapeutic cloning used to treat brain disease

• 18:00 23 March 2008
• NewScientist.com news service
• Peter Aldhous

Therapeutic cloning works – in mice, at least. An international team has restored mice with a condition similar to Parkinson's disease back to health, using neurons grown in the lab that were made from their own cloned skin cells. This is the first time that a disease has been successfully treated using cloned cells that had been derived from the recipient animals. "It is the proof of concept," says Lorenz Studer of the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York, US, who led the research. But he warns that is too early to say whether the technique can be developed into a practical therapy for human patients.

Studer's team first gave mice a drug to kill neurons that make the neurotransmitter dopamine. This caused movement problems similar to those seen in people with Parkinson's disease. Then the researchers took biopsies from the tails of these mice and shipped them to Teruhiko Wakayama, a specialist in cloning at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan.
Wakayama's team transferred the nuclei from skin cells taken from these biopsies into mouse eggs stripped of their chromosomes, to create embryos. The Japanese researchers extracted embryonic stem (ES) cells from these cloned embryos, creating a total 187 ES cell lines from 24 mice.

Back in New York, Studer's team took the ES cells, coaxed them to develop into dopamine-secreting neurons, and then transplanted these neurons into mice with symptoms of Parkinson's.
All six mice that had been given grafts of neurons derived from their own skin cells got significantly better, scoring well on tests of movement.
Genetic match

This is similar to results obtained by a team led by Ron McKay of the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland. That team transplanted neurons grown from conventional mouse ES cells into the brains of rats with the symptoms of Parkinson's. But unlike McKay, Studer did not have to suppress the immune systems of his animals to allow the grafts to survive. Studer had less successful results, however, when he transplanted cloning-derived neurons into seven totally unrelated mice with Parkinson's-like symptoms, again without immune suppression. They showed little improvement, and autopsies conducted 11 weeks later revealed chronic inflammation in their brains. In three of them, none of the transplanted cells had survived.

"There's a major difference in the immune response depending on whether the cells are genetically identical," observes Alan Trounson, president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine in San Francisco, US. While Studer's study shows the value of achieving genetic matching by cloning, it is unclear whether the technique will prove viable in people. For one thing, nobody has yet managed to create a single human ES cell line by cloning. Even if this can be done, human eggs are in very short supply, which would limit the number of patients who could be treated.
Technically demanding

Also, Studer points out that his success in mice required a partnership between two research teams, one highly skilled in neural grafting, the other a world leader in cloning. "It was a very challenging project," he says. "You need a special set of expertise that is typically not available in an individual lab."
If the process cannot be made less technically demanding, any treatment for human patients is likely to be extremely costly.
This is why many researchers are excited about the possibility of using a simpler genetic reprogramming technique pioneered by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan. This can turn skin cells into cells that have similar properties to ES cells.
But Yamanaka's technique leaves behind active copies of genes that can induce cancer. This problem would need to be solved before such cells could be considered for use in human patients.
Stem Cells - Learn more about the promise and the controversy in our cutting-edge special report .
Journal reference: Nature Medicine (DOI: 10.1038/nm1732)

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c.nelson

Hey, remember "Flowers for Algernon"?

godchaser

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A 'Super' status intelligence isn't too far off. Keeping up with the Jones' is gonna take on a whole new meaning. :) Course, if i take your meaning Mr. Nelson- its permanence could be considered the Flowers on our Graves? Nothing'll ever be the same, and w/increasing intellect, we'll lose, or develop personality not resembling anything we are today?

I don't particularly cotton the notion either. Fact is, it irritates me to no end. I figure it for runaway sophistication that can only serve to ostracize. It's hard to imagine what a society will begin to look like when a majority are functioning of IQ's in the many hundreds, then thousands?

The day i can't enjoy a dog and a beer at the Ballpark, is the day i take hold of Amish-like higher-functioning. :)

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TopGun

You beat me to it. I was about to post the same thing. Great stuff epically the info on ES. The next ten years should be amazing.

rowuk

What happens if we have no jobs or insurance for these brilliant and healthy people?

I believe the answer is that they get depressive and sick.....................

godchaser

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No different than anything else i guess Robin- success is derived of necessity? We'll see though. Not that most folks of our generational society as it stands; will want anything to do with living indefinitely, with significantly progressive IQ's? But then again, maybe we will.

The more i think about it, the more i realize i'm going to have to get comfortable being thought a Dinosaur among the hussle and bussle. :) No way in hell, i want to lose track of the things i feel important and significant to my life presently.

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Jurandr

Ever watch that show on Discovery Channel-- Dirty Jobs? There are thousands of jobs filled by the less-brilliant prople that our normal every-day life could not function without. If all of a sudden, these people turned into Brilliant minds, these important occupations go out of business, and all of a sudden the balance is out of whack. It's like band... You think cutting out the low brass will help everybody (who wants them, anyways?!), but when they're gone, you miss them dearly.

For those who don't: The man had an IQ of 40-60, took this new therepy, and all of a sudden this guy was a genius! Unfortunately, his brain became smarter and smarter, until it smart-ed itself out, and the man turned back into what he was before, which, he realized, is where he would prefer to be in the first place.

rowuk

I think the ruling class will eventually have a problem with lower class people with brains..........
That will make way for new practice mutes that allow you to literally blow your brains out when practicing!

I guess the major issue is, how unaffordable can society allow medicine to become, regardless of the actual advantages?

godchaser

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'Great stuff epically the info on ES. The next ten years should be amazing.'

That must be so TopGun. I agree a hundred percent, and am hoping for the best. The next two after that will really get our attention eh. And all this progress amidst fundamentalist concerns that actually served to aid these progressive therapies.


'I guess the major issue is, how unaffordable can society allow medicine to become, regardless of the actual advantages?'

Look on the bright side Robin.. :) -as is typical, wealth is the Guinea Pig that affords a society its beginning momentum in technological price spiraling. A good example is getting our genome mapped. Think i read where it costs about 60k to have done presently, which is down from the 350k it had cost prior -and's projected to cost a thousand dollors in the coming years, and so-on. Innovation is moving so rapidly, with perpetually increasing speed and felxability. -And running nose to nose with an equally expansive competitive market, that cost-effective tech. advance is fast taking on the persona of socialism, but hugely profitable. :) It's win win like never before.

Which is why we can reasonably expect to see a classless society; to any meaningful measure, that eventuates the world? -Its just good business.

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rowuk

Chris,
honestly, who NEEDS the genom decoded? People that make decicisions about who gets what treatment...................?
All of the technology that you mention is wiping out the middle class Chris. Plenty of people looking for work because technology is more portable than bodies. In many parts of the US a fair wage is not available because there are too many unemployed. Still the issue of demand and availability!
Medical costs have been running away for years and while we do see some spectacular things happen (I was a stem cell donor last year for an 18 year old Canadian girl with leukemia), the normal joe has to check with the bank before going to the dentist........... That will get even worse. I see no relief in site!