The Speculist

Randall Parker has obviously been busy lately, keeping his FuturePundit blog up to date with some very encouraging developments on the stem cell front.

Earlier this week, Randall reported on how the notion that stem cells will play a major role in soon-to-come life extension efforts is gaining broad acceptance among researchers. He quotes at length from a recent article in the journal of the European Molecular Biology Organization which begins with this hopeful scenario:

It is the year 2053. A mere century after James Watson and Francis Crick resolved the structure of DNA, scientists at the forefront of medical research have just announced the first successful regeneration of a human heart. After re-routing the blood of Jón Sigurdsson, a terminal heart-failure patient, to an advanced cardiac assist device and removing most of the damaged organ, doctors thawed a frozen tube of Jón's personalized stem cells—established in 2013 from embryonic stem cells created through somatic nuclear transfer—and injected them into his chest. Thanks to a sophisticated cocktail of growth factors, the new stem cells target the damaged area and rapidly get to work, perfectly rebuilding a youthful heart. Several weeks later, Jón is discharged in excellent health. Regenerative medicine provided him with a new kidney ten years ago, and subsequent double knee regeneration gave him renewed mobility. Now his new heart will soon have him running a six-minute mile again. Jón Sigurdsson is 100 years old.

Randall points out that, in order to realize this kind of scenario, we have to make substantial progress in our understanding of and ability to manipulate both adult and embryonic stem cells. He notes that the "either-or" debate about the ethical superiorty of the former over the latter often distracts from this very real fact.

And speaking of that debate (and all ancillary tiresome arguments), today Randall reports on some encouraging developments:

Cellular dedifferentiation means turning a cell from a specialized state (e.g. muscle cell or liver cell) into an unspecialized cell that has the ability to become other cell types. At the most extreme dedifferentiated state embryonic stem cells are so dedifferentiated that they have the ability to become all more specialized cell types. This extreme state is called pluripotency. Ethical opposition to the use of cells harvested from human embryos to create pluripotent cell lines has led scientists to look for other ways to create pluripotent stem cells. A major figure in stem cell research says a number of labs are getting close to announcing successful techinques for dedifferentiating cells.

Excellent news. This capability might just put this particular argument to bed once and for all. It doesn't solve the ethical problem of creating an cloned embryo for therapeutic purposes, but it just might make such an approach redundant.

Links from Carnival of Tomorrow 4.0!