The Derby City Chapter of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association Network- Serving Kentuckiana.
Message From the President
Dear Members & Friends-
July's meeting will be held at Frazier Institute, 220 Abraham Flexnor Way, Louisville, in the 10th floor dining room at 6:30 p.m. To date we do not have a speaker scheduled. We hope to have one scheduled at meeting time, but will show a video presentation in the event that one is not scheduled. Refreshments will be provided.
August's meeting will be held at Frazier Institute, 220 Abraham Flexnor Way, Louisville, 10th floor dining room, at 6:30 p.m. Refreshments will be provided.
- David Allgood
From the Courier-Journal, 6/7/07 –ed
STEM CELL TECHNIQUE COULD BYPASS ETHICAL CONCERNS
By Nicholas Wade
In a surprising advance that could sidestep ethical objections to stem-cell research, three teams of researchers have come much closer to converting a patient's cells into specialized tissues that might replace those lost to disease.
The advance is an easy-to-use technique for reprogramming a mouse's skin cell back to the embryonic state. Embryonic cells can be induced in the laboratory to develop into many of the body's major tissues. If the technique can be adapted to human cells, researchers could use a patient's skin cells to generate new heart, liver or kidney cells that might be transplantable and would not be rejected by the patient's immune system.
That could avoid the need to get stem cells from human embryos, which involves destroying embryos, an action many people oppose. The findings generated tumult on Capitol Hill, where
the House is set to vote today on a bill that would loosen President Bush's 2001 restrictions on the use of human embryos in the stem cell research.
Acutely aware that their new work could undermine that key political goal, scientists caution that their success with mouse cells does not guarantee quick success with human cells. They called for legislation that would give federally funded researchers access to embryos slated for destruction at fertility clinics.
"A human is not a mouse, so a lot more work has to be done," said Marius Wernig, who was on the team led by Rudolph Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Mass.
If approved, the bill, similar to one approved by the Senate, would go to the president. The White House has already said that the president would veto it.
Previously, the only way to convert adult cells to embryonic form has been by nuclear transfer, inserting an adult cell's nucleus into an egg whose own nucleus has been removed. The egg somehow reprograms the nucleus back to an embryonic state. That procedure is known as therapeutic cloning when applied to people, but no one has yet succeeded in doing it.
The new technique, developed by Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan, depends on inserting just four genes into a skin cell.
