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Subject: NYTimes.com Article: New Stanford Institute Is to Study
Controversial Stem Cell Manipulation


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New Stanford Institute Is to Study Controversial Stem Cell Manipulation

December 12, 2002
By NICHOLAS WADE






A new stem cell institute being set up at Stanford
University will study a wide variety of human diseases
through two advanced but controversial techniques of cell
manipulation. One is nuclear transfer, also used in cloning
animals, and the other will involve generating new lines of
human embryonic stem cells.

The institute will be headed by Dr. Irving Weissman, a
Stanford expert on the stem cells in the bone marrow that
daily renew the red and white blood cells. An anonymous
donor has provided $12 million to start the institute.

Dr. Weissman said he intended to explore two promising new
lines of inquiry made possible by embryonic stem cells. The
first is to find out if stem cells and cancer cells may use
the same genetic machinery to replicate themselves. Stem
cells multiply freely to generate all the mature cells of
the body, and though mature cells lose this ability cancer
cells somehow regain it.

A later goal will be to use stem cells to develop models of
human disease, meaning cultures of cells that can be
studied in the laboratory. Dr. Weissman gave as an example
the creation of a model for Lou Gehrig's disease, which is
caused by the mysterious death of the motor neurons that
control the muscles. From a patient's body cell, the
nucleus - which contains all the DNA including the faulty
genes that cause the disease - would be extracted and
inserted into an unfertilized human egg whose own nucleus
had been removed. Still in a laboratory dish, the egg would
develop after a few days into the early, pre-implantation
embryo known as a blastocyst.

The blastocyst's inner cell mass, from which all the
different cell types of the body are formed, would then be
removed and the cells, now known as embryonic stem cells,
would be exposed to signals that make them develop first
into nerve cells and then into the specialized motor
neurons. If these start to die, just as they do in patients
with Lou Gehrig's disease, researchers should have an
excellent opportunity to pinpoint the errant genes that are
responsible and to devise drugs to counter their subversive
action.

The same technique, Dr. Weissman said, could be used to
create models of any other human disease, with the
embryonic stem cells being converted into whatever type of
tissue the disease affects, whether the pancreas in the
case of diabetes or basal cell ganglia in the case of
Parkinson's disease.

"This is so important that we finally have the chance to
get a handle on every one of these human multigenic
diseases - it would be wrong not to try it," Dr. Weissman
said. Multigenic diseases, which are caused by several
errant genes acting in concert, are particularly hard to
analyze because they follow no obvious pattern of
inheritance.

A flurry of news reports yesterday portrayed the Stanford
institute as planning to do a form of human cloning, and
Dr. Weissman said he was distressed to see his research
plan presented in that light. The nuclear transfer
technique is used by animal cloners to make blastocysts
that are then inserted into an animal's womb. In Dr.
Weissman's proposal the blastocysts would stay in the Petri
dish and be destroyed to make human embryonic stem cells.

The creation of human embryonic stem cells has been
controversial because some critics, including the Roman
Catholic Church, object to destroying human blastocysts,
even the surplus ones created in fertility clinics. Under
the compromise announced by President Bush on Aug. 9, 2001,
researchers using federal money may work with stem cell
lines established before that date but not generate new
ones of their own. This restriction does not apply to
biologists who do not use federal money for this part of
their research.

Dr. Weissman noted that Gov. Gray Davis of California
recently signed legislation outlawing the cloning of a
person but encouraging nuclear transfer technology and
other methods to make human embryonic stem cells.

He emphasized that the new institute's initial focus would
be on cancer cells and exploring whether they proliferate
because they have learned to switch back on the genes that
were used by their stem cell predecessors. "That opens up
some wonderful possibilities because we would have a whole
new set of genes to look at," Dr. Weissman said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/12/science/12CLON.html?ex=1040716503&ei=1&en=
8a13f8fcbe16bf66



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