Thoughts on Skin/Embryonic Fusion Stem Cells

Thoughts on Skin/Embryonic Fusion Stem Cells

The Hartford Courant published an editorial reporting that researchers at Harvard University have fused a laboratory grown stem cell with an adult skin cell and were able to “reprogram” it to behave as an embryonic stem cell. The editorial acknowledged “bugs,” such as 2 sets of DNA, and concluded that scientists “must be allowed to follow the pathways where their curiosity leads them.”

The Harvard study was published in late August in the journal Science. A Washington Post article about the research says that the stem cells used under this technique would basically be versions of a person’s own skin cells. The article goes on to discuss the second set of DNA in the hybrid cells and states that the researchers see removal of the second set as a significant barrier to be overcome.

The original news release from Harvard says,
The next step is to puzzle out how an embryonic cell can turn back, or reprogram, the genes of an adult cell. That could take 10 years, [Chad] Cowan guesses. "But is will eventually happen, and it will mean scratching at some of biology's fundamental questions in the process,” he says.

Cowan was the lead author of the study and is a biologist.

The ability to create hybrid cells does not eliminate the need for embryonic stem cells as starters as far as I can tell. It does seem that it would reduce the number of embryonic stem cells needed, if the hybrid cells can then generate additional cells themselves, and the stem cells used could all be those grown in a laboratory and not taken directly from an embryo. The basic biological question of how differentiation occurs remains.