The UK is surpassing US research

A third British research team has received the government ok, and funding, to pursue research into hybrid embryos, one that will be half pig and half human but not contain any animal DNA. From The Scientist:

The team plans to use a new technique that, if it works, could provide a well of human embryonic stem cells without the use of human embryos. They will fuse human adult skin cells into empty pig eggs, resulting in embryos with mostly human DNA and some pig mitochondrial DNA. Then, stem cells taken from the embryos will be chemically treated to destroy the pig DNA, which could impair cell function when interacting with human mitochondrial DNA.

The team plans to use skin cells from patients with mutations for heart disease, and hopes to grow the resulting stem cells into human heart cells. The stem cells will not be used to treat humans but to research genetic mutations.

Meanwhile, New Jersey is not getting the state stem cell institute it has been building. After voters chose to not borrow state money to fund the research that would be conducted there, the state has halted construction on the $150 million facility. And though California and Massachusetts are still progressing with stem cell research, an egg shortage is making the future questionable.

Without federal funding and a viable way to obtain materials (i.e. eggs), the United States will be reading about research rather than conducting it.

Medical research is essential

PZ Myers has written a great entry on the need for medical advancement and research at Pharyngula. Though he concentrates on cancer research, he also highlights the overall lack of science funding and the need for medical research in general.

It's been drying up. Researchers are spending more time struggling to get basic funding and less time doing the work that saves lives, and more often than not, they aren't getting funded. Often, too, the researchers who are getting screwed are the new researchers, the ones who don't have established labs right now, which means we are short-sightedly demolishing our future research infrastructure.

I have to wholeheartedly agree with him. And it's one of the political movements I have no qualms writing about and pushing. Science needs to be at the forefront of funding and public dissemination.

It is my goal that at some point in the future, Maeflowers will be incorporated as a nonprofit, offering money to research that will advance mankind and our health. I'm far from that step, but knowledge is power. Stop by PZ's blog and read what he has to say. It'll be worth it.

Mesenchymal stem cells to treat disease

Gene Therapy had an interesting series of review articles recently on the potential of mesenchymal (adult) stem cells.

Therapeutic potential of genetically modified mesenchymal stem cells

Stem and progenitor cell-mediated tumor selective gene therapy (abstract)

Endothelial progenitor cells for cancer gene therapy (abstract)

Gene-modified bone marrow cell therapy for prostate cancer (abstract)

And for those who want a little more depth -

Inflammation and tumor microenvironments: defining the migratory itinerary of mesenchymal stem cells (abstract)

Cancer treatments would benefit greatly from targeted therapy, and developing controllable stem cell populations would such a boon for many diseases. Just think - no immune response because they are your own cells, no radiation sickness or adverse drug reactions, and no systemic damage only destruction of the targeted cell population.

A sad situation for NIH-funded labs

During the current administration, federal funding has decreased severely. I saw it first hand as a graduate student in an NIH-funded lab. Many of my papers are still sitting there waiting for final experiments before being peer-reviewed for publication. My lab could no longer afford me or the reagents in my final year there. We even had to give up two lab and three office spaces due to a lack of funds, moving into a much smaller area than we thought we could manage. There was some hope, as I made my exit, that the post-docs could cross the t's and dot the i's once money came back, but my last contact with them (last month - 16 months after my departure) was that nothing has been done with the write-ups of my 4+ years of blood, sweat, and tears.

The Scientist has a story of another researcher who fared much worse. Losing your lab describes something very sad that is occurring far too often nowadays.

I, like many other scientists, ended up with an alternative career in the sciences instead of a research position because the career ladder was cut off at the third rung.