Stem cell 'major discovery' claimed

BBC News, James Gallagher, Health and science reporter, 29 January 2014

Petri dishes filled with stem cells

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Stem cell researchers are heralding a "major scientific discovery", with the potential to start a new age of personalised medicine.

Scientists in Japan showed stem cells can now be made quickly just by dipping blood cells into acid.

Stem cells can transform into any tissue and are already being trialled for healing the eye, heart and brain.

The latest development, published in the journal Nature, could make the technology cheaper, faster and safer.

The human body is built of cells with a specific role - nerve cells, liver cells, muscle cells - and that role is fixed.

However, stem cells can become any other type of cell, and they have become a major field of research in medicine for their potential to regenerate the body.

Embryos are one, ethically charged, source of stem cells. Nobel prize winning research also showed that skin cells could be "genetically reprogrammed" to become stem cells (termed induced pluripotent stem cells).

Acid bath

Now a study shows that shocking blood cells with acid could also trigger the transformation into stem cells - this time termed STAP (stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency) cells.

Dr Haruko Obokata, from the Riken Centre for Developmental Biology in Japan, said she was "really surprised" that cells could respond to their environment in this way.

She added: "It's exciting to think about the new possibilities these findings offer us, not only in regenerative medicine, but cancer as well."

The breakthrough was achieved in mouse blood cells, but research is now taking place to achieve the same results with human blood.

Chris Mason, professor of regenerative medicine at University College London, said if it also works in humans then "the age of personalised medicine would have finally arrived."

He told the BBC: "I thought - 'my God that's a game changer!' It's a very exciting, but surprise, finding.

"It looks a bit too good to be true, but the number of experts who have reviewed and checked this, I'm sure that it is.

"If this works in people as well as it does in mice, it looks faster, cheaper and possibly safer than other cell reprogramming technologies - personalised reprogrammed cell therapies may now be viable."

For age-related macular degeneration, which causes sight loss, it takes 10 months to go from a patient's skin sample to a therapy that could be injected into their eye -and at huge cost.

Prof Mason said weeks could be knocked off that time which would save money, as would cheaper components.

'Revolutionary'

The finding has been described as "remarkable" by the Medical Research Council's Prof Robin Lovell-Badge and as "a major scientific discovery" by Dr Dusko Ilic, a reader in stem cell science at Kings College London.

Dr Ilic added: "The approach is indeed revolutionary.

"It will make a fundamental change in how scientists perceive the interplay of environment and genome."

But he added: "It does not bring stem cell-based therapy closer. We will need to use the same precautions for the cells generated in this way as for the cells isolated from embryos or reprogrammed with a standard method."

And Prof Lovell-Badge said: "It is going to be a while before the nature of these cells are understood, and whether they might prove to be useful for developing therapies, but the really intriguing thing to discover will be the mechanism underlying how a low pH shock triggers reprogramming - and why it does not happen when we eat lemon or vinegar or drink cola?"

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Simple way to make stem cells in half an hour hailed as major discovery


"Last Channeling of 2013" – Dec 15, 2013 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Text version)

“…Yawee, let's talk about your invention, your most recent one. You described your guided stem cell protocol as a "go there and stay there" instructional technology to guide the stem cells directly to where they are needed. You "instruct" the stem cells to go to a place in the body and stay there where they can be used. Now, the ones sitting in the chairs today don't know anything about that. But you do and I do. And you know that you're either incredibly lucky, over and over, or you're dealing with something else. Because to guide a stem cell in a "go there and stay there" scenario is like a Human Being reporting to a city of a billion people, then standing on the outskirts and locating that one person they are looking for, right away, by accident! Somehow it works.

Your "go there and stay there" is a macro program accomplishing an incredible micro result. How? Trillions, if not hundreds of trillions of DNA molecules are all identical in the Human body. Somehow they "talk to each other" instantly. If one DNA molecule senses something, they all do. Science doesn't know that yet. They may have thought of it, but they don't know it. There is a mystery here of how DNA does what it does. Somehow it must communicate, yet there is no process of communication known to your science that could explain it. But they all "see" the intent of your program together as one and implement it as one.

We have told you this before, and we have written books about it. Your DNA has quantum attributes. It's not a quantum molecule, but it gives quantum instructions. Ah, but there's more. All the DNA I perceive in your body right now is singular, with only one allied consciousness. This is because the DNA in the Human body is in an entangled state with itself. It is quantumly locked in a way that it works as one benevolent union. This is a quantum physics attribute that is not yet fully understood and not yet applied to biology. It represents the smart body, the innate body, and if you want proof of that, it's everywhere!

What do you know about identical twins? You know that they have the same DNA and that they are the only Humans on the planet who do. What do you know about studies of identical twins? You know that they can be on opposite sides of the planet and both can have the same intuition at the same time about something that's happening with their family. Now, what does that tell you about their DNA? It's connected! In fact, it's connected within a particular quantum state. What do you know about quantumness in DNA? The answer is, almost nothing! So let me fill you in. It's beautiful. Let me fill you in, because it's going to temper everything you do from now on. ..”