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Monday, August 15, 2005 - Bangor Daily News

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SALISBURY COVE - It's not the small minority of Americans who oppose stem cell research on religious grounds that concerns leading research scientists, secure in their belief that stem cells could be the key to curing such diseases as cancer, diabetes and Parkinson's.

It’s the thousands of voters who simply don’t understand the issue that keep scientists up at night, said Dr. Gary Gilliland, a professor at Harvard Medical School and a leukemia researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who spoke Saturday night at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory Stem Cell Symposium.

“Our biggest problems in the past have been ones that are political,” agreed Dr. Leonard Zon, a Harvard Medical School professor and president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. Zon has spent much of the past year advocating for his field, both in Washington and at the Massachusetts Statehouse in Boston.

“It made us realize there is a lot of misinformation out there about embryonic stem cell research,” he said.

Stem cells have captured scientists’ imaginations because they have the potential to produce every organ and tissue in the human body. In the early stages of life, when embryos are growing rapidly, these cells can shift to become blood vessels, brain matter or skin as needed, and can replicate themselves over and over again.

As adults, all humans carry stem cells in their bodies, but with time, they develop into more specified cells, which can produce a small group of related cells, such as the different components of blood. These kinds of cells are responsible for the bone-marrow transplants used to treat leukemia patients.

But embryonic stem cells could have unlimited potential, researchers say.

Today, just 22 “lines” of stem cells - groups of embryonic cells that have been reproduced in a lab - are available to American scientists. More than 200 other lines have been produced elsewhere in the world, with South Korea in particular proving to be a global leader, but a federal ban approved by President Bush in 2001 withholds all federal research dollars from scientists who use the new cell lines.

Researchers at the MDI Bio Lab and the nearby Jackson Laboratory research stem cells, but because their work is focused on sea creatures and mice, respectively, their work is far less controversial than research that relies upon human embryos, and they are not affected by the funding ban.

Zon called the ban “extremely frustrating” Saturday night, and said that it has discouraged talented young American researchers from going into the field, while other countries excel.

The ban is linked to the ongoing debate over abortion and when life begins. Many Christian conservatives oppose the use of embryonic stem cells because they believe that life begins at conception - making any use of an embryo no less than murder.

But national polls indicate that a majority of Americans support embryonic stem cell research. In fact, a Gallup poll taken early this month indicated that 56 percent of those polled support creating new stem cells from embryos, while 40 percent oppose the practice, and 4 percent are not sure.

In South Korea, scientists already have developed techniques to create a new stem cell line with a woman’s single ovulation. But scientists such as Gilliland and Zon are advocating only for the right to use the hundreds of “spare” embryos that are created in fertility clinics then disposed of each year.

“A lot of the controversy is about these eggs that are determined to be medical waste but are, instead, put to use,” Gilliland said.

Scientists could transplant the genes of an ill person into these donated embryonic stem cells to create customized stem cells that would not be rejected by the body.

If the ethical issues around embryonic stem cell research are resolved, sickle cell anemia and diabetes could be the first diseases “cured” in this way. Already, researchers know how to transplant the cells that can produce insulin or normal-shaped blood cells - if rare donor cells become available. With the procedure known as “nuclear transfer,” doctors can simply make the cells they need.

Cancer could be next, according to research that Gilliland has published recently.

Despite medical advances, 1,500 Americans are lost to cancer each day, and the disease is now the nation’s most common cause of death, Gilliland said.

“We’ve been treating cancer as if it were a huge weed with a small root ball. [But] if you don’t get the root, the cancer will come back,” he explained.

Instead, researchers such as Gilliland are studying the cells that tell tumors to reproduce uncontrollably, which some theorize are a sort of stem cell run amok. Doctors know how to kill many cancer cells, but they have not yet managed to destroy the cancer stem cells, he said. Earlier this year, Gilliland and his research partners reported in the journal Science that they have identified some of these cells for a particular type of leukemia. Now, they’re testing different drugs that they believe may inhibit growth of the cancer stem cells.

“We’re so close. We just don’t quite have the knockout punch,” Gilliland said. “For the first time, we have hope that we can strike right at the heart of the beast.”

For more information, visit the International Society for Stem Cell Research Web site at http://www.isscr.org, where explanations of stem cell technology, including a downloadable 18-minute video, are available at no cost.