Stem cell double whammy

Revolutionary breakthroughs - particularly when it comes to medical science - do seem to pop up with increasingly monotonous regularity.

So much so that you could be forgiven for assuming that there was nothing particularly revolutionary about the latest stem cell breakthrough reported today in the journal Nature Online.

But for once the hyperbole may be warranted. At a stroke this research sidesteps one of the most profound obstacles to the use of stem cells in human patients, AND signals an end to the use of cells derived from human embryos. Something of a double whammy as revolutionary breakthroughs go.

The research, by scientists at the MRC's Centre for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, builds on the work of American and Japanese researchers who announced a new way to reprogramme adult cells, returning them to something like their embryonic state, last year.

The technique involved the use of viruses to transform the cells, but that modified their DNA, leading to an increased risk of cancer. As a result these IP, or Induced Pluripotent stem cells, could never have been transplanted into a human patient.

Now the Edinburgh team, led by Dr Keisuke Kaji, has found a way to reverse the DNA modification associated with the use of viruses in cell reprogramming. It means that IP stem cells - ones derived from an adult cell rather than an embryo - can now be used in the development of future treatments.

Those treatments may still be a long way off - perhaps as much as ten years according to the head of the Edinburgh Centre, Professor Ian Wilmut. But the development of a technique to generate stem cells that does not rely on the destruction of a human embryo is one he warmly welcomes.

"This is the opening of a new era in biomedical research which over a period of time will provide treatments for some at least of the diseases which we cannot treat at the present time," he says.