Doubts Cloud Adult Stem Cell Research
By Dan Vergano
A magazine investigation has raised new doubts about pioneering adult stem cell studies, leaving questions about the much-touted medical potential of these cells.
A report in New Scientist magazine finds “apparently duplicated (images) being used to describe results from different experiments” in a 2006 patent obtained by University of Minnesota researchers.
The patent relied on figures from a 2001 mouse study in the journal Blood and a thesis by researcher Moryama Reyes, now of the University of Washington-Seattle. The magazine says the images appear “flipped and modified,” first claiming to show adult bone marrow stem cells, which regularly turn into blood cells, unexpectedly turned into bone. Then the same images were flipped to claim the same cells had unexpectedly turned into cartilage, the magazine says. The result led to a much-noted 2002 Nature report led by researcher Catherine Verfaillie, then of the University of Minnesota.
The surprise result raised the possibility that adult stem cells offered the same medical potential as politically charged embryonic stem cells, says stem cell researcher Arnold Kriegstein of the University of California-San Francisco. “At this point, some serious questions need to be answered,” he says. “If there’s evidence of manipulation in one instance, it puts the entire paper in doubt.”
Embryonic stem cells are the precursor to almost every tissue in the body. They could grow into replacement tissues for diseases such as diabetes and cancer. In theory, the body would not reject the tissues from cloned embryos because the new tissue would be a genetic match of the recipient.
Opponents such as Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops call the research immoral because the cells are collected from embryos that are destroyed in the process.
The 2002 study results had suggested that adult stem cells, found in every tissue in the body in more specialized form than embryonic stem cells, offered the same replacement tissue potential as embryonic ones, without involving the destruction of embryos. But stem cell researchers have reported scant success in reproducing the 2002 adult stem cell results, according to the International Society for Stem Cell Research.
An earlier New Scientist investigation found that the 2002 Nature paper contained images reused and labeled as evidence for different results in an Experimental Biology study. Verfaillie has written to both journals, calling the images unreliable. Blood has begun an investigation, according to New Scientist.
“Right now we have no reason to question the work itself. We have some questions, and we are trying to get to the bottom of them,” says Tim Mulcahy, vice president for research at the University of Minnesota, which has begun an inquiry into the latest Blood images. Reyes and Verfaillie did not reply to requests for comment. (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.