RE: [DIYbio] Question about adult stem cells

> -----Original Message-----
> From: diybio@googlegroups.com [mailto:diybio@googlegroups.com] On
> Behalf Of The Dude
>
> Recently I read a study on stem cells being used on damaged skeletal
> tissue and they took over and grew within the muscles increasing their
> size and showing no signs of ageing.
>
> I was thinking it might be possible to change some of the genes within
> an adult stem cell from a person before introducing it back in in this
> way. There are many study's on changes to genes within skeletal muscle
> that could be beneficial. Looks like it would involve inserting genes
> and deleting genes from the adult stem cell. Would this be possible
> with our current technology?

It is possible to genetically alter stem cells from a patient before
reintroducing them. That's already happening at the level of early trials
for genetic disease therapies. e.g. Muscular dystrophy, as I recall.

Most stem cell therapies don't work via the stem cells settling in and
producing new cells. I can only think of a few examples in which that was
shown to happen. Instead it is more usually the signals being produced by
the transplanted cells that cause things to happen in the local cell
populations. These signals are presently very poorly understood and are an
active topic of research. e.g.:

http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2013/05/considering-the-regenerative-sign
als-emitted-by-transplanted-stem-cells.php

At some point, the cell part of many cell therapies will probably be dropped
in favor of signal manipulation.

So yes, the research community can presently tinker with stem cell genes in
a largely arbitrary fashion, but no-one can say what best to alter at this
stage. For example, FGF-2 looks interesting, but it's far too early to say
what's going in relation to muscle aging and FGF-2 levels. Some research
shows a clear pictures, other research tells a completely different story.

The issue of cancer is ever a concern: if you're making the body run its
regeneration and tissue maintenance as though young, but haven't dealt with
pervasive cellular and intra-cellular damage, then your risk of cancer is
probably fairly high. That may or may not be enough of a cost to outweigh
the potential benefits.

Reason

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