CAMR friends:

Now that the embargo has been broken, I suspect there will be many stories
going up on media websites this morning.

We did not put out a statement on this, but we have been doing many
interviews (in fact I am on my way to the NPR studios in a few minutes)

Its important that we celebrate this as the good science that it is, but we
not let opponents of research spin it to mean that embryonic research should
not be pursued.(Its interesting to note that one of the sources used by the
team in Wisconsin was fetal tissues, I doubt some of those trumpeting this
work realize that)

Here are some of the talking points we are using:

Even the scientists who did this important work will tell you they support
continued research using embryonic stem cells.  We don't really know what
all the capabilities of embryonic cells are yet, so saying reprogrammed
cells have those capabilities is premature.

All we have been asking for is to allow federally funded scientists the
ability to do the research that will tell us which approach gets us to
treatments the fastest.

While stem cell science will move forward, it moves forward with one hand
behind its back. Ask the incredible scientific talent in this country, we
can do more to advance real therapies and cures if we have all the best
tools at our disposal. Sure, we're going to make incremental progress, but
the patients in this country deserve to know that we have tried every
reasonable avenue to take on the challenging diseases of our time.

In the meantime, we continue a ridiculous fight in this country over whether
we should allows literally hundreds of thousands of embryos to perish in
freezers or allow their parents to donate them to scientific advancement.

The best American scientists are waiting for federal funding and oversight
so that the work can be given a level playing field and equal opportunity.
When it comes to science, we need to listen to the experts -- the
scientists -- not politicians or religious extremists.

Can't stop scientific progress everytime someone voices a religious
objection to a specific technique.  Some trumpet one of these new papers
because they object to the use of embryos. Others would object to the Yu
(Wisconsin) study because they used fetal cells, others would object to the
part that used foreskins from circumcised infants.  Last week there was a
paper about using cloning related techniques in monkeys to create stem cell
lines. Some would object to that being done in animals, others would object
if it were moved to humans. Sometimes it seems that every form of research
offends some group somewhere.

In a pluralistic society, we don't force people to participate in things
they think are wrong, but we don't let them impose that ban on the rest of
us.

Sean Tipton
President
CAMR
Director, Public Affairs
American Society for Reproductive Medicine
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202-863-2494
202-421-5112 (mobile)
 on behalf of Tony Mazzaschi
Sent: Tue 11/20/2007 9:08 AM
To: Sean Tipton
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CAMR.friends] Researchers Create Stem Cells Without
DestroyingEmbryos

>From the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday morning.

Tony Mazzaschi
AAMC
Researchers Create Stem Cells Without Destroying Embryos

By GAUTAM NAIK
November 20, 2007 8:55 a.m.
In the quest to treat difficult diseases, researchers have created human
embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos or using hard-to-get eggs.
The technique may prove to be easier, cheaper, and more ethically appealing
than an alternative approach that requires cloning.

Two separate teams of researchers say they have sidestepped the cloning
method and reprogrammed mature human cells into a primordial, embryonic-like
state. Those cells were then transformed into other tissue types, such as
heart cells. The long-term hope is that such freshly-created tissue may, for
example, be used to heal a heart-attack patient.

Unlike cloning, "the wonderful thing about this approach is that it's easy.
You're going to see lots and lots of labs give it a try," predicts Robert
Blelloch, a stem cell biologist at the University of California, San
Francisco, who has performed his own reprogramming experiments. He says he
read the latest studies but wasn't involved in them.

One set of experiments, published today in the journal Cell, was led by
Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University. A second paper was published in Science
by researchers at the lab of James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin,
who created the first human stem-cell line in 1998.

The Science and Cell papers were embargoed for general release until noon,
New York time, but an Australian paper broke the embargo.

In both experiments, the scientists inserted several genes into a mature
human cell. For reasons that no one can yet fully explain, this essentially
reset the molecular clock and turned older, mature cells into embryonic-like
cells.

There are several limitations to the current approach. For now, both teams
had to use dangerous viruses to effectively transport the genes into the
cell, which could have deadly consequences if it was immediately applied to
humans. Dr. Yamanaka and others say they are testing other viruses in the
hopes of finding a non-harmful one.

And before the reprogramming technique can be applied to human patients, it
needs to be tested on large animal models to ensure that it's safe and
effective.

Still, the latest results are a big step up from similar breakthroughs in
mice, separately reported this summer by Dr. Yamanaka's group and two other
research teams in the U.S. The Kyoto team reported that embryonic-like cells
developed with the new technique could even help form a new mouse -- a
gold-standard test for the viability of the created tissue.

Almost nobody predicted that the same feat could be repeated with human
cells quite so quickly.

"We were very surprised because human and mouse embryonic cells are very
different," says Dr. Yamanaka, who is also a senior investigator at the
Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease in San Francisco, and is
rapidly emerging as the leading scientist in his field. Much of the
reprogramming experiments published this summer was sparked by a landmark
paper he published in 2006.

Many scientists have believed that stem cells' grand promise would more
likely be fulfilled if they created an embryonic clone of a patient, and
then harvested that clone for fresh tissue. Heart, nerve or other cells
obtained that way would have a singular advantage: They wouldn't trigger an
immune response from patient because they'd share the same DNA.

There aren't any sizable ethical concerns or immune-response worries with
reprogramming. But to many, the science seems daunting, even implausible.

"You have this extremely strong arrow of time -- and it's is going
completely backwards," says Dr. Thomson. His team, including researcher
Junying Yu, also used four genes to reprogram the human cell. Two of the
genes they used were different from the ones tested by their counterparts in
Japan.

Despite the latest breakthroughs, the nuclear transfer approach - which uses
a cloning step to get embryonic stem cells - isn't likely to disappear. Just
last week, for example, researchers in Oregon created embryonic clones of
monkeys, suggesting that the nuclear-transfer method still hold considerable
promise.

However, nuclear-transfer is being held back by several problems. It's hard
to get human eggs; the technology is expensive and tricky; and funding isn't
so readily available. A major scandal has hurt, too. In 2005, a Korean
researcher published a study that appeared to show that he had created
human-embryonic clones, but the claim turned out to be fraudulent.

So it's not such a surprise that Ian Wilmut, the man who cloned Dolly the
sheep a decade ago, recently said he has been persuaded to give up his own
cloning experiments, thanks to news of Dr. Yamanaka's successes.

"Any scientist with basic technology in molecular and cell biology can do
reprogramming," says Dr. Yamanaka. "If we can overcome the issue [of having
to use dangerous viruses to ferry the genes into cells], many more people
will move from nuclear transfer to this method."

Write to Gautam Naik at [log in to unmask]
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Rayilyn Brown
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Arizona Chapter National Parkinson's Foundation
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