New Source of 'Ethical' Stem Cells Discovered?

Joe Carter reports on a potentially wonderful medical breakthrough:

In a remarkable medical breakthrough, scientists from Harvard and Wake Forest report that they have discovered a new source of stems cells that have the ability to create muscle, bone, fat, blood vessel, nerve, and liver cells in the laboratory. These newly discovered stem cells, which they have named amniotic fluid-derived stem (AFS) cells, may represent an intermediate stage--“halfway houses”--between embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells.

The research, which has been ongoing for the past seven years, was reported in yesterday’s Nature Biotechnology. One of the primary advantages of the AFS cells is their ready availability. The cells can be harvested from backup amniotic fluid specimens obtained for amniocentesis or from “afterbirth,” the placenta and other membranes that are expelled after delivery.

Anthony Atala, M.D., senior researcher and director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, says that a bank with 100,000 specimens theoretically could supply 99 percent of the U.S. population with perfect genetic matches for transplantation.

A number of factors make these cells preferable to embryonic stem cells (ESC), which have never been used for therapies. Their value could even potentially surpass adult stem cells, which are used in about seventy treatments and therapies.

Compare embryonic stem cells with amniotic fluid-derived stem cells:

ESC: Requires destruction of a human embryo to obtain cells.
AFS: Obtaining cells is ethically unproblematic.

ESC: If genetic matches for transplantation could be obtained at all, it would come from the creation and destruction of cloned human embryos.
AFS: Genetic matches for transplantation can be obtained from discarded placentas.

ESC: Therapeutic uses impeded because they are tumorigenic.
AFS: Do not produce tumors.

Even if we ignore the ethics of cloning and embryo destruction, this last reason is enough to prefer AFS to ESC. As James Sherley, an associate professor of biological engineering at MIT, notes, “[F]iguring out how to use human embryonic stem cells directly by transplantation into patients is tantamount to solving the cancer problem.”

Read the whole thing!

If I understand this correctly, this has the potential to supply a superior set of stem cells in a non-controversial way.  The potential impact of this on medical progress could be incredible!

Related Links:

• Newsweek: New Stem-Cell Source Could Alter Debate
• New Scientist: 'Ethical' stem cells that arrive with baby
• New Scientist: Cancer warning over stem cell therapies