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The source of this article was the Canberra Times. http://tinyurl.com/3jj4j Stem-cell cures in five years: scientists By Kylie Walker Friday, 25 June 2004 SYDNEY: Injectable cell-based cures for diabetes, Alzheimer's and spinal-cord damage could be as little as five years away, with Australian scientists announcing they have produced more than one million stem cells from a single embryo. It is the first time Australian scientists have cultured embryonic stem cells from an Australian embryo on home turf. Australia's stem-cell research is two years behind the United States-led cutting edge, but Professor Robert Jansen, medical director of Sydney IVF, is confident of catching up. "There are several hurdles, ... but there's a small chance it will be inside five years," Professor Jansen said of possible therapies. Safety and anti-contamination guidelines are yet to be drawn up and the issue of tissue rejection by stem-cell recipients must be overcome. As well, scientists need to work out how to generate enough cells to meet demand - millions of cells would be needed to treat one patient. "The obvious direction of the research is the treatment of serious childhood and adult diseases where cells are lost or damaged or destroyed and can't be replaced by the body's own stem cells. "That's true of some tissues more than others, particularly the brain and spinal cord [and] in childhood diabetes, where the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas have lost their function or are so depleted in number they can't do their job." Other conditions for which stem cells could be used include Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, motor neurone disease, brain damage, multiple sclerosis and heart conditions. The clinic won licences in April to cultivate stem cells from as many as 600 embryos, after the Federal Government legislated to allow research on human embryos. Rules for harvesting cells dictate that embryos must have been created for the purpose of assisted reproduction and the permission of donor parents must be obtained. In May this year the clinic thawed an embryo frozen in March 2000, then extracted cells from its centre and placed them on a human cell-based "feeder" culture to grow. The need to grow the cells on human "feeder layers" rather than culturing them on mouse cells was a major breakthrough, according to research director Dr Tomas Stojanov. However, he said that scientists needed to work out how to generate enough cells to meet demand. The Sydney team is now trying to automate the process of extracting viable cells from unwanted five-day-old embryos, so it can produce stem cells in much greater volumes. The cells cultivated by the team remain undifferentiated, meaning they have the potential to turn into any cell in the human body. There's already a huge demand for the IVF clinic's stem cells from medical research scientists who plan to turn them into nerve, heart and pancreatic cells, among others. Among the strict criteria for the harvesting of stem cells is that the embryo must be one that would otherwise have been discarded, but that doesn't excuse the research in the eyes of Right To Life Australia or the Catholic church. "Two wrongs don't make a right - they should not have created excess embryos in the first place," president of Right To Life Australia Margaret Tighe said. "Quite clearly this involves the destruction of a very small human being for the benefit of other human beings." Even if the cells could save a loved one, Ms Tighe said she would remain against the research. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn