[Gava]

The current federally funded embryonic stem cell lines have minimal therapeutic value in terms of offering records of cell growth and development. Although it may be possible to avoid destroying the embryos (that's what I'm working on) we still need ESC lines of a sort in order to "watch" the early stages of natural development. I'm also building a device which could possibly identify the degrees of plasticity inherent in all the cells of a body so that the markers can be located through Risk-OPEX translation (don't bother looking it up the technique it's brand new and incomplete). The problem with the current lines is that most of the past stored fertility clinic embryos are contaminated with mouse feeder cells and bovine serums. Only about 11-15 of the 78 are of any use. I've only had access to one of the uncontaminated ones for about 4 months. Most of the time I just use other peoples' data and manipulate it in order to make sense of it. This will not do.

MAPCs could be very useful for producing specific tissue donor cells. They are a way to avoid the lethal teratomas associated with their embryonic predecessors and avoid most of the immunological problems associated with semipotent stem cells. They can also be fairly easily manipulated to form only ONE tissue type rather than EVERY tissue type at once. But here's the bad news. We don't know how to choose the tissue type, not without knowledge of the proper CD-markers and proteins. We can potentially "back up" just about any pluripotent (adult) stem cell to a totipotent (embryonic stage) cell through the proper genetic signaling and nutrient/substrate baths. This would switch ON the genes for the embryonic state. But even this won't be possible until we see it working in the forward direction. Bottom line, we need to somehow study embryos. For example, the chances of 'stumbling' upon and detecting all 200 common genes associated with hematopoietic and neural stem cells and the exact one of the countless trillions of marker combinations necessary for the transdifferentiation to occur just by looking at one mature cell vitro-culture is astronomically unlikely.

[MHGinTN]

I was a supporter of the President's approach when he made his ruling on funding because I felt it was vital to study the process even if the cell lines had zero therapeutic potential. Those cell lines already existed from earlier killing of embryos so I reasoned it was more like using cadaver tissues. [BTW, I'm glad to hear you're working on how to obtain ESC without killing embryos because I consider the embryo age to be the earliest age in the lifetime of human beings and thus harvesting them for their body parts (their inner cell mass stem cells) to be cannibalism.]

Thanx again for the informative posts. I wish you 'bon chance' in your efforts.