Discovery May Eliminate Potentially Lethal Side Effect of Stem Cell Therapy

[TECH NEWS]

Like fine chefs, scientists are seemingly approaching a day when they will be able to make nearly any type of tissue from human embryonic stem cells. But within these batches of newly generated cells lurks a big potential problem: Any remaining embryonic stem cells—those that haven’t differentiated into the desired tissue—can go on to become dangerous tumors called teratomas when transplanted into patients. Now researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a way to remove these pluripotent human embryonic stem cells from their progeny before the differentiated cells are used in humans. (“Pluripotent” describes cells that are able to become all types of adult tissue.) “The ability to do regenerative medicine requires the complete removal of tumor-forming cells from any culture that began with pluripotent cells,” said Irving Weissman, MD, director of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. “We’ve used a combination of antibodies to weed out the few undifferentiated cells that could be left in the 10 or 100 million differentiated cells that make up a therapeutic dose.” Stanford University has filed for patent protection for the use of monoclonal antibody-based protocols to remove teratogenic pluripotent stem cells from a cell mixture.

8/14/2011, Stanford University/Eurekalert