3 ms·
Curious your thoughts on the rate of acceleration of: - the technology required to utilize stem cells for therapies vs - the technology required to generate
by toufka 9y ago
Curious your thoughts on the rate of acceleration of:
- the technology required to utilize stem cells for therapies
vs
- the technology required to generate stem cells from somatic cells
To my mind those two technologies likely overlap significantly. I am curious where do you see the most likely divergence. Or, in other words, what particular new technologies would you like to see come to fruition that would enable banked stem cells to be put to immediate uses without the requirement for a full-blown arbitrary genetic manipulation suite.
- markkat 9y agoThat's an interesting question that is difficult to answer in brief. I believe I covered it a bit in a Google Talk I gave that was posted a couple of days ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSRqd1JfoaI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSRqd1JfoaI In short, I see storing your youthful multipotent biology giving you an early onramp on pluripotent stem cell induction, however I am not as optimistic as some. Biology is complex and there are blind spots to intervention. We still struggle with male-pattern baldness. I can say that we are working on what I would like to see come to fruition. That is, take our younger cells, and rejuvenate the bone marrow niche, using our young bone marrow as bone marrow. In addition to that simple 'heterochronic transplantation', I intend to determine how we can improve upon it. Some realistic avenues are 1) removal of resident senescent cells and 2) rejuvenation of the cells ex vivo prior to reintroduction.