bbc reports major stem cell breakthrough in Japan

[Desmond84]

They are

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25004-extraordinary-stem-cell-method-tested-in-human-tissue.html

But I can't find any reputable source claiming they have already been successful

Yeah that's the pictures I saw as well I think it is going through the peer review process, which usually takes 2-3 months and if the claims are true they managed to make human stem cells for less than $100, now that is called laws of accelerating returns

Imagine in 10 years walking into a clinic and going from nw7 to nw1 for less than $3000! THAT IS GOD-LIKE...

Hair transplant surgeons will downplay these breakthroughs till their last breath. I watched an interview with Dr Peter Diamandis the founder of Singularity university and X prize. Anyways he was talking about how technology will make a lot of high paying jobs redundant! He gave an example where an app on your phone will be able to diagnose you better than a board of clinicals combined and how this will put doctors in a very uneasy situation whereby they can't expect to charge so much for a consultation or diagnosis! I see the hair transplant industry following the same path...fingers crossed

Science & Technology are our best friend and whoever puts them down is either uninformed or has vested interests in other places...

[southern]

Well guys, all the naysayers last month were claiming this was another mice study and simply dipping human cells in acid will not yield stem cells! Well, to the surprise of many scientists, this simple and incredibly cheap technique (less than $100) has just shown to work in humans...We have managed to reduce the cost 100 fold in less than 3 years now that's exciting. Prepare yourself for a revolution in biotechnology and regenerative medicine

Researchers herald greatest medical breakthrough of the age, deriving stem cells from human skin cells

Scientists are heralding a massive breakthrough in stem cell research today, after a team of American and Japanese researchers announced yesterday that they had succeeded in turning human skin cells into fully pluripotent stem cells, a move many have said may be the greatest medical breakthrough of recent times.

The technique involved an incredibly simple process of bathing the human skin cells in a weak citric acid solution for 30 minutes and inserting specific gene sequences back into the cell. The process astonished scientists just last month by successfully turning mice blood cells into stem cells, allowing scientists to then turn those newly-created stem cells into actual mouse embryos, demonstrating that the stem cells truly were pluripotent. The same process has now been successfully used to create human stem cells as well.


Pluripotent stem cells, which have the ability to reproduce indefinitely as well as be transformed into any other type of tissue, have long been proposed to be a potential cure for any number of conditions and diseases, from diabetes to spinal cord injuries. Ethical concerns have previously haunted research proposals, however, as most stem cells, previously, were derived from either from human embryos and required killing the embryo in the process of retrieving the cells, or from the tissue of aborted fetuses. Concerns reached epic proportions when scientists announced just this past May that they had successfully cloned the first human embryos, literally bringing life to pro-life advocate’s fears of scientists creating human beings for the purpose of medical research.

http://liveactionnews.org/researcher...an-skin-cells/

Another one for the naysayers. They don't seem to get this part every time they say 20 years away..
Under the new legislation, if small Phase I/II clinical studies can establish product safety and provide a meaningful indication of therapeutic effectiveness, accelerated approval becomes a possibility – in qualifying situations the government will grant conditional approval to commercialize the product. At that point, a post-market surveillance period will be in effect to more thoroughly delineate safety and efficacy profiles, with subsequent final approval granted at a later date, or alternatively, the potential of revocation of the approval if data shows the therapy to be inefficacious or unsafe.
If the new policy can lead to new therapeutics being available and shave the regulatory route from seven-to-ten years down to only two or three years without sacrificing safety, Abe's plan could prove transformational on multiple fronts.

http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/companies-aligned-capitalize-japanese-regenerative-medicine-initiatives-150000280.html

[Thinning87]

Bad News...?

Well guys, all the naysayers last month were claiming this was another mice study and simply dipping human cells in acid will not yield stem cells! Well, to the surprise of many scientists, this simple and incredibly cheap technique (less than $100) has just shown to work in humans...We have managed to reduce the cost 100 fold in less than 3 years now that's exciting. Prepare yourself for a revolution in biotechnology and regenerative medicine

Researchers herald greatest medical breakthrough of the age, deriving stem cells from human skin cells

Scientists are heralding a massive breakthrough in stem cell research today, after a team of American and Japanese researchers announced yesterday that they had succeeded in turning human skin cells into fully pluripotent stem cells, a move many have said may be the greatest medical breakthrough of recent times.

The technique involved an incredibly simple process of bathing the human skin cells in a weak citric acid solution for 30 minutes and inserting specific gene sequences back into the cell. The process astonished scientists just last month by successfully turning mice blood cells into stem cells, allowing scientists to then turn those newly-created stem cells into actual mouse embryos, demonstrating that the stem cells truly were pluripotent. The same process has now been successfully used to create human stem cells as well.


Pluripotent stem cells, which have the ability to reproduce indefinitely as well as be transformed into any other type of tissue, have long been proposed to be a potential cure for any number of conditions and diseases, from diabetes to spinal cord injuries. Ethical concerns have previously haunted research proposals, however, as most stem cells, previously, were derived from either from human embryos and required killing the embryo in the process of retrieving the cells, or from the tissue of aborted fetuses. Concerns reached epic proportions when scientists announced just this past May that they had successfully cloned the first human embryos, literally bringing life to pro-life advocate’s fears of scientists creating human beings for the purpose of medical research.

http://liveactionnews.org/researcher...an-skin-cells/

Scientists Struggle to Replicate Stem-Cell Research Breakthrough

New Approach Called Into Question



Scientists say they are struggling to replicate a new approach for creating stem cells, raising further questions about the breakthrough technique whose announcement garnered international attention.

The experiments have come under increased scrutiny after Japan's Riken research institute opened an investigation last week into whether there were any irregularities in images used in two papers describing the stem-cell technique. Several laboratories now report that their initial efforts to replicate the experiments have failed.

"We tried it on human cells and so far it hasn't worked," said Jeanne Loring, director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. "That's consistent with what other people have found" in their initial efforts to replicate the experiments, she added.

[Continues]

The rest is here: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...rss_Technology

[bigentries]

Scientists Struggle to Replicate Stem-Cell Research Breakthrough

New Approach Called Into Question



Scientists say they are struggling to replicate a new approach for creating stem cells, raising further questions about the breakthrough technique whose announcement garnered international attention.

The experiments have come under increased scrutiny after Japan's Riken research institute opened an investigation last week into whether there were any irregularities in images used in two papers describing the stem-cell technique. Several laboratories now report that their initial efforts to replicate the experiments have failed.

"We tried it on human cells and so far it hasn't worked," said Jeanne Loring, director of the Center for Regenerative Medicine at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. "That's consistent with what other people have found" in their initial efforts to replicate the experiments, she added.

[Continues]

The rest is here: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...rss_Technology

It was easy to see that coming
The guy that lead all of it already has a bad track record, and apparently doesn't even have a PhD and tends to see himself as a champion in the middle of evil evidence-backed medicine

[Arashi]

The guy that lead all of it already has a bad track record, and apparently doesn't even have a PhD and tends to see himself as a champion in the middle of evil evidence-backed medicine

Thanks, didn't know Nigam was involved here

[bigentries]

Thanks, didn't know Nigam was involved here

But it was pretty close, this one says they apparently manipulated the images

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2014/02/19/papers-reporting-new-stem-cell-technique-being-investigated/R6Z48wWsKQSHoG4R8Nk74K/story.html

Imagine if scientist used logic from hair loss forums. "Maybe they changed the images because they wanted to calm down the skeptics, but there's nothing wrong with that"

[bigentries]

Another interesting read

http://www.boston.com/news/science/blogs/science-in-mind/2014/02/06/the-debate-over-new-stem-cell-technique-begins/ykgAjbBtC00qPti1g19KoK/blog.html

[Thinning87]

thanks for sharing

[rbrown]

Interesting AMA related to this news.Many people are skeptic about it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1yc6ff/im_paul_knoepfler_a_stem_cell_researcher_ask_me/

One of the questions asked:


This may be a stupid question but I will ask anyway. How does stem cells effect hair regeneration for those of us who are bald. I know regenerated organs have a larger need but I'm just curious if we will see it in our lifetime.

Each of our hair follicles has stem cells associated with it. It seems those stem cells can grow new hairs if moved elsewhere. What this means is that in the future instead of people having hair transplants from the back of their head to the front, doctors may be able to simply inject hair stem cells all over your bald head and they'll grow new hairs. It's a simple idea and promising, but could take another 5-10 years to become a reality for people.

[locke999]

Thanks rbrown, it's an interesting discussion.

A followup by another poster from the same reddit page:

(I'm a postdoc in Paul's lab.)

The biggest thing standing in the way of using stem cells to regenerate hair is that in any clinical trial, the risk to the patient has to be outweighed by the potential benefit, to the patient and/or to society. For a life-threatening condition, it's much easier to satisfy that criteria than for a condition like baldness. For cell-based therapies, there are serious additional risks compared to a cream or pill or whatever, because once you give the therapy, you can't undo it -- if the patient has an adverse reaction, there's no way to go in and pick out all the cells you gave them. So overall, although I think the science is there and stem cells could be used to regenerate hair, I think it'll be a long time before we see it happen.

[HairBane]

Interesting AMA related to this news.Many people are skeptic about it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1yc6ff/im_paul_knoepfler_a_stem_cell_researcher_ask_me/

One of the questions asked:


This may be a stupid question but I will ask anyway. How does stem cells effect hair regeneration for those of us who are bald. I know regenerated organs have a larger need but I'm just curious if we will see it in our lifetime.

Each of our hair follicles has stem cells associated with it. It seems those stem cells can grow new hairs if moved elsewhere. What this means is that in the future instead of people having hair transplants from the back of their head to the front, doctors may be able to simply inject hair stem cells all over your bald head and they'll grow new hairs. It's a simple idea and promising, but could take another 5-10 years to become a reality for people.

This guy raises an interesting point:

(I'm a postdoc in Paul's lab.)
The biggest thing standing in the way of using stem cells to regenerate hair is that in any clinical trial, the risk to the patient has to be outweighed by the potential benefit, to the patient and/or to society. For a life-threatening condition, it's much easier to satisfy that criteria than for a condition like baldness. For cell-based therapies, there are serious additional risks compared to a cream or pill or whatever, because once you give the therapy, you can't undo it -- if the patient has an adverse reaction, there's no way to go in and pick out all the cells you gave them. So overall, although I think the science is there and stem cells could be used to regenerate hair, I think it'll be a long time before we see it happen.

[bigentries]

I didn't saw anyone addressing this, the paper has been proven to be fake and one of the authors want it retracted

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/01/health/time-stem-cell/index.html?iref=allsearch

This is way skepticism should be taken more seriously
And notice how they're talking about "punishment". Real science has repercussions