Stem cell researc to go forward in the US, Bush promises to veto..

[El_Machinae]

I don't think that tissue slices of babies would be xenotransplantation, though, so we can use them!

Hmmmn, I wonder if cord blood could be nurtured into feeder cells? That would be awesome. In Canada, you can specifically donate your baby's umbilical cord to research (for free), but you have to proactively do it. It's considered the 'next best thing' in a lot of ways.

 

[Dr Tiny]

I don't think that tissue slices of babies would be xenotransplantation, though, so we can use them!

Hmmmn, I wonder if cord blood could be nurtured into feeder cells? That would be awesome. In Canada, you can specifically donate your baby's umbilical cord to research (for free), but you have to proactively do it. It's considered the 'next best thing' in a lot of ways.

Not sure if cord blood would work, my understanding was the feeder layer has to be adherant and grow on the plastic dish that the stem cells are growing in. HUVECS - endothelial cells from umbilical cord might work though. Use of human cells as feeders would overcome the xeno problem and I seem to remember a piece of work where they have claimed to have used human fibroblasts as feeders.

Incidentally I found this abstract from a team at Cambridge University, UK. Ihavnt read all the paper yet but they claim that ESC can be used to reprogram ASC to become pluripotent, this technique involves cell fusion so it is not ideal. Other work would suggest that the pluripotency is caused by overexpression of a protein called Nanog. This work using ESC obviously has big implications for the ASC work and would not have been possible in the US given the veto.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/..._uids=16123299&query_hl=9&itool=pubmed_docsum

There are also two exciting pieces of work claiming generation of pluripotent cells. One is from mouse testis, the other is 'virgin birth' embryos ie the process of Parthenogenesis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis
Both have good possibilities as sources of pluripotent cells.