UC Davis researcher Paul Knoepfler is
the rare stem cell scientist who blogs about his work as well as
writing about issues in the field.
what he described as a “somewhat provocative paper” published by his lab in
“Stem Cells and Development.” He said the paper argued
that iPS cells “are very similar in some ways to cancer cells.”
technical details and background of the research. But at the end of
this item, Knoepfler wrote,
“So what does this mean in the big
picture?
“I believe that iPS cells and cancer
cells are, while not the same, close enough to be called siblings. As
such, the clinical use of iPS cells should wait for a lot more study.
Even if scientists do not use iPS cells themselves for transplants,
but instead use differentiated derivatives of iPS cells, the risk of
patients getting malignant cancers cannot be ignored.
“At the same time, the studies
suggest possible ways to make iPS cells safer and support the notion
of reprogramming cancer cells as an innovative new cancer therapy.
“Stay tuned in the next few days for
part 2 where I will discuss what this paper went through in terms of
review, etc. to get published. It wasn’t a popular story for some
folks.”
research, which was financed by the California stem cell agency and the NIH, was picked up by several online sites, including Redorbit,
Medicalexpress and geekosystem.
Source:Recommendation and review posted by Fredricko
