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Cells From Unborn Babies 'Could Give Spare Parts for Life'

Posted on: Monday, 17 October 2005, 18:00 CDT

By JENNY HOPE

CELLS could be taken from children before they are born to provide them with 'spare parts' later in life, it has been claimed.

The technique involves stem cells the body's master cells from which specialised tissue later develops.

They could be stored and then used later in the child's life to replace those damaged in heart attacks, by disease or simply to remedy baldness. The possibility of such treatments comes after researchers in the U.S. managed to produce stem cells from early stage embryos during IVF which could be banked in a deep freeze.

It is the first time scientists have shown it is possible to retrieve the cells without destroyingthe embryo. They are the body's 'building blocks' from which bone, muscle, skin, brain and organ tissues are formed.

Those taken from early-stage embryos are the most useful, as they have greater potential to become any kind of tissue, whereas stem cells found in adults are more limited.

Embryonic stem cells are being used in research to repair many body defects, but there has been an ethical outcry here and in the U.S. because it involves the destruction However, in the latest research, scientists used a screening technique normally employed in IVF fertility treatment to identify embryos carrying a genetic disease.

They removed one cell from eightcell embryos and used it to successfully produce lines of stem cells. The seven-cell embryos grew into normal foetuses.

The research, being discussed today at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine annual meeting in Montreal has been carried out only in mice but scientists believe the technique could also be used in humans.

Researchers reporting in the online edition of the science journal Nature say their technique avoids the ethical problem of creating an embryo purely for research or personalised spare tissue.

Lead researcher Professor Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology a biotechnology company based in Worcester, Massachusetts said children born using IVF could grow up with a lifetime's supply of perfectly matched stem cells, which could be used to treat any diseases they might develop.

He said: 'If the cells were taken from an embryo that resulted in a child when implanted, they would be a perfect genetic match.

'They could be frozen down and of embryos.

stored, and used throughout the child's lifetime if it developed diabetes or heart disease, or even if it was going bald and wanted a hair transplant.

'The ability to generate human embryonic stem cells without the destruction of embryos would reduce or eliminate the ethical concerns of many,' he said.

His research team carried out six separate experiments involving eight-cell stage mouse embryos.

A single cell was taken from each and lines of stem cells subsequently retrieved were tested and found to develop into beating heart muscle and nerve cells.

The remaining seven-cell embryos grew normally in the womb in about half of cases a similar success rate to intact embryos. The technique is an advance on the banking of blood taken from the umbilical cord of newborn babies.

This is increasingly being used by parents as a way of saving stem cells for the child's benefit in later life.

However, stem cells taken from an early embryo are potentially more versatile than those in cord blood.

Dr Robert Schenken, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said the research was an important step forward.

However, he warned: 'Our work has taught us that in reproductive medicine, what works in animals may not translate well to humans.' Ethics campaigners said experts should concentrate on using stem cells from cord blood or adults.

j.hope @dailymail.co.uk

Source: Daily Mail; London (UK)

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