X-Message-Number: 10704
From:  (Ken Stone)
Subject: NYT article - Scientists Cultivate Cells at Root of Human Life (long)
Date: Fri, 06 Nov 1998 19:58:39 GMT

New York Times

November 6, 1998

Scientists Cultivate Cells at Root of Human Life

By NICHOLAS WADE

Pushing the frontiers of biology closer to the central mystery of life,
scientists have for the first time picked out and cultivated the
primordial human cells from which an entire individual is created.

The cells, derived from fertilized human eggs just before they would
have been implanted in the uterus, have the power to develop into many
of the 210 different types of cell in the body -- and probably all of
them. Because they can divide indefinitely when grown outside the body
without signs of age that afflict other cells, biologists refer to them
as immortal.

Eventually, researchers hope to use the cells to grow tissue for human
transplants and introduce genes into the body to remedy inherited
disease.

But there is a thicket of ethical and legal issues, as well as technical
problems, to be tackled. The cells are obtained from embryos created at
in-vitro fertilization clinics and so far do not seem definably
different from the handful of primordial cells from which an entire
individual is created.

Though the scientists involved in the work consider use of the cells
justified because they come from embryos that would otherwise have been
discarded, other believe the cells have a special status in that they
retain the potential to develop into an individual, and that the use of
the cells may draw criticism if this status is not taken into account.

The new cells, known as human embryonic stem cells, have eluded capture
until now because they exist in this state only fleetingly before
turning into more specialized cells, and need special ingredients to be
kept alive outside the body.

The cells have many possible uses, of which the most promising is to
grow new tissue, of any kind, for transplant into a patient's body. The
cells may also offer effective routes to human cloning, although both
the researchers and their sponsor deny any interest in this application.
Another likely use is in gene therapy, the insertion of new or modified
genes into body tissue.

Two forms of human embryonic cells have been developed, one by a team
under Dr. James A. Thomson of the University of Wisconsin in Madison,
the other by Dr. John Gearhart and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Md. Dr. Thomson's work is
reported in this week's issue of Science, Dr. Gearhart's in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Congress in 1995 banned Federal financing of research on fetal cells,
including those derived from embryos, and the university researchers
whose work was announced today were funded by the Geron Corporation of
Menlo Park, Calif., a biotechnology company that specializes in
anti-aging research.

The research "has potential health benefits which I think are extremely
promising, and I am sorry that the law prevented us from supporting it,"
said Dr. Harold Varmus, director of the National Institutes of Health.

 Cells Are Specialized as They Develop

After an egg is fertilized, it divides several times and forms a
blastocyst, a hollow sphere with a blob of 15 to 20 cells, known as the
inner cell mass, piled up against one wall. It is from these cells that
the embryo develops. Dr. Thomson grew his embryonic stem cells from the
inner cell mass of blastocysts that had been left over from fertility
treatments and were due to be discarded. The donors of the blastocysts
granted permission for them to be used in research.

As an embryo grows and develops, its cells become irreversibly committed
to their fates as specialized components of the body's organs. A pocket
of cells, known as embryonic germ cells, is protected from the
commitment process so as to create the next generation of eggs and
sperm. Dr. Gearhart's group has developed embryonic stem cells from the
germ cells of aborted fetuses. The cells developed by the two groups may
well be equivalent but this has yet to be proved.

If researchers are able to use the cells to grow new tissues, the work
could alleviate the shortage of livers and other organs for transplant.
Cultures of the cells in the laboratory could be nudged down different
developmental pathways to become heart or bone marrow or pancreatic
cells. Before reaching their final stages, the about-to-become heart
cells, for example, could be injected into a patient's ailing heart.
Guided then by the body's own internal regulatory signals, the cells
would develop into new, young heart tissue, supplementing or replacing
the heart cells already there.

The same approach should in principle work with any tissue of the body.
Human embryonic stem cells would thus serve as a universal spare parts
system. Because the cells grow and divide indefinitely in the
laboratory, very few blastocysts would be needed.

Many technical problems remain to be resolved. The art of directing
embryonic stem cells down specific pathways is in its infancy. But heart
muscle cells have been grown from mouse embryonic stem cells and
successfully integrated with the heart tissue of a living mouse.

Dr. Thomson in 1995 isolated the embryonic stem cells of a monkey, and
Geron intends to do pilot experiments in these cells.

Another problem lies in making grafted cells compatible with the
patient's immune system.

Dr. Thomas B. Okarma, Geron's vice president for research, said Geron
would explore several ways of doing this. One, the least preferred,
would be to set up a bank with enough different human embryonic cells
that most patients could be matched. Another would be to suppress the
self-recognition genes that make the stem cells appear foreign to the
patient's immune system or, more elegantly, to replace them with copies
of the patient's own self-recognition genes.

A third approach would be to convert one of the patient's own body cells
back to embryonic form by fusing it with a human embryonic stem cell
whose own nucleus had been removed. Embryonic cells may have the power,
not yet understood, to rescue an adult cell's nucleus from its
specialized state by flicking all the switches on its DNA back to
default mode. This reprogramming of DNA is presumably what happened when
mice were cloned in July from adult cells.

Ethical Concerns Prevent Some Tests

The ethical status of the cells is also likely to be a matter of
discussion. They cannot become a fetus, as their blastocyst no longer
exists, yet they are very similar, if not identical, to the 20 or so
primordial cells from which the embryo develops.

Both research groups refer to their cells as "pluripotent" because, when
injected into a mouse with no immune system, the cells develop into many
of the major tissues of the body. The tissues are disorganized and do
not develop into a normal embryo.

The cells may also be "totipotent," meaning they can form every one of
the body's cell types. The test for totipotency, developed with mouse
embryonic stem cells, is to inject stem cells into another blastocyst. A
normal mouse will usually develop, but it is composed of a patchwork of
cells, some from the blastocyst and some from the injected embryonic
stem cells, proving the stem cells retain all their powers.

It would be unethical to perform such an experiment on people, but if it
could be done, it seems likely that the human embryonic cells cultured
by the researchers would also prove to be totipotent. If so, they may be
capable in principle of contributing to the generation of a new
individual.

But ethicists say great care must be taken in work involving human
embryonic cells.

"Any time you take a cell off a blastocyst, that cell could be used
itself to create a human being, so some groups in our society believe in
making it transplantable you have derailed it into becoming a kidney or
some other tissue," Dr. Lori Andrews, an expert on the laws governing
reproductive technology at the Chicago Kent College of Law, said.

"Some researchers say, 'It's just a bunch of cells, why should people
care?' But that totally avoids the fact that some people do care, and
I'm concerned that if the researchers don't take into consideration the
variety of viewpoints about embryos, they might ultimately end up with
more restrictive regulations."

Geron, which has exclusive licenses to use the cells, under patents held
by the researchers' universities, says it regards them as qualitatively
different from other cells used in research.

"Because these cells are derived from human blastocysts there is a moral
authority here, so we take these cells seriously," Dr. Okarma, of Geron,
said.

Dr. Okarma said he believes that use of the cells is justified because
they are something less than a living embryo, and life-saving treatments
may be derived from them. "We are not saying the ends justify the means,
but that given that the moral authority of these cells is subordinate to
that of the embryo, the work we contemplate with them is appropriate,"
he said.

But Dr. Gearhart said he did not consider the cells that he and Dr.
Thomson have isolated to have a special moral status because "they
cannot form a fetus -- you cannot take one of these cells and form a
being out of it."

Still, Dr. Gearhart said he would not argue with the view of Dr. Okarma
at Geron that the cells had a different standing from ordinary cells.
Dr. Johnson, too, said that they were "special cells."

Dr. Kevin T. Fitzgerald, a geneticist and Jesuit priest at Loyola
University Medical School, said that if the human embryonic stem cells
are totipotent, "then you are disrupting the viability of life and we
are back to the question of how to justify destroying life for the
purposes of scientific advancement."

The new cells may well reawaken fears of human cloning, although many
ethicists have now come around to believing that the public's fears,
despite science fiction writers' portrayal of clonal armies of frenzied
despots, are largely beside the point. Many experts now predict human
cloning is more likely to end up as a rare treatment offered in
fertility clinics, no different from others like in-vitro fertilization
and egg donation in that they were first bitterly denounced and are now
regarded as routine.

"Human cloning will likely also be accepted once it becomes a reality.
Most of today's ethical arguments against it were previously used
against in-vitro fertilization and turned out to be false," writes
Dorothy C. Wertz, a bioethicist at the Shriver Center, in the current
issue of Gene Letter.

The availability of human embryonic stem cells suggests a quite
different possibility to biologists, who are well aware of how mouse
embryonic stem cells have long been used to generate genetically altered
mice.

The belief that humans can now be modified like the mouse "will be the
kneejerk reaction of the academic community," Dr. Thomson said.

He said human embryonic stem cells were unlikely to be used in this way
because there were more promising approaches for gene therapy in people.
For one thing, the mouse method requires the creation of many embryos in
order to obtain the few in which new genes integrate in exactly the
correct position, as well as the breeding of a male and female mouse
that have been genetically altered. In its present form, the technique
is evidently inapplicable to humans.

Federal Law Shifts Research to Industry

The National Institutes of Health and the university scientists it funds
often play a leading role in reviewing new biomedical technologies.

But because of the Federal funding ban, university scientists cannot get
Government support to study human embryonic stem cells. But industry can
do whatever research it pleases, without necessarily obtaining
government approval. Academic biologists believe this asymmetry is
unfortunate and that the new technique would receive better and more
detached review if the agency and its scientists could take part in the
discussion.

Dr. Varmus said that an expert panel on human embryo research had
recommended to the health institutes that attempts to derive stem cells
from human embryos should be permitted, but Federal efforts along this
line were thwarted in 1995, with the Congressional funding ban. Dr.
Varmus said he believed the public "will see how important the benefits
of this research might be."

A Senate bill to ban human cloning was defeated in February this year,
the principal argument of its opponents being that its overly broad
language would prohibit promising research on human embryonic stem
cells.

In any event, any ultimate use of human embryonic stem cells may face
legal hurdles in the nine states that have outright bans on research on
human fetal tissues, Dr. Andrews said.

Some laws also prohibit payment for embryos, a restriction that might
extend to cells and tissues derived from embryos.

 A Possibility of Eternal Cells

The technique reported today reaches to the central mysteries of life
and death. As biologists have recently begun to understand, the body's
cells are not inherently mortal. They become mortal only when committed
to developing into one or another of the body's mature cell types. These
specialized cells have mostly lost the ability to grow and divide, but a
few, typically those of the skin and intestinal lining, can divide in
culture about 50 times and then die.

In January this year, biologists at Geron learned how to manipulate the
section of DNA that marks off the 50 or so permissible divisions. By
reversing the changes in this section of DNA, called the telomere, they
created lines of cells that divided well beyond the usual limit and are
still going strong, while retaining their youthful vigor and appearance.
Biologists refer to these cultured cells as immortal because they are
expected to grow and divide indefinitely.

Embyronic stem cells are also immortal because, until they become
committed to specialized fates, their telomeres are renewed each time
they divide. Unlike ordinary cells, they grow indefinitely in culture.

In the lineage of living organisms, they cycle indefinitely from the
embryo to the germ line to a new embryo, forever avoiding specialization
into the mortal cell types that comprise the body.

Geron biologists believe they can manipulate the telomeres of the human
embryonic stem cells so that the cells stay immortal even as they turn
into specialized tissues. Can the mortal body therefore be repaired with
new, tissues that remain youthful indefinitely? "Exactly," Dr. Okarma
said.

Critics have said it would be folly to tamper with the telomere
division-counting system because it probably arose in evolution as the
body's last-ditch defense against any runaway cell likely to become a
cancer. Dr. Okarma said that new experiments had largely laid this
concern to rest by showing that telomerised cells are no more likely to
become malignant than are normal cells.

These grand schemes may or may not come to pass, but the techniques now
at hand for manipulating human embryonic stem cells will at least allow
them to be seriously attempted.

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