printable versionStem cells show promise in lab--and at polling place
BY AMY ADAMS
Irving Weissman
Stem cell research took center stage in 2004, as much a political issue as a scientific one. Medical school researchers played a high-profile role advising the backers of Proposition 71, successfully advocating for the measure that will provide up to $300 million dollars a year over the course of 10 years for stem cell research in California.
Philip Pizzo, MD, the Carl and Elizabeth Naumann Professor for the Dean of the School of Medicine, was the first person to be appointed to the panel that will oversee how Prop. 71 funds are to be spent. “I hope that our activities within California will foster more of a national discussion about stem cell research so that our nation also benefits from the extraordinary contributions that will emanate from California,” he said shortly after being tapped to serve on the committee. Its first meeting is scheduled for Dec. 17.
Irving Weissman, MD, the Karel and Avice Beekhuis Professor of Cancer Biology, and Paul Berg, PhD, the Robert W. and Vivian K. Cahill Professor of Cancer Research, Emeritus, both recorded advertisements supporting the proposition, as well as lobbying for embryonic stem cell research on a national level. They hope the passage of Prop. 71 will help to thwart legislation in Congress that would make it illegal to produce new embryonic stem cell lines using a process known as nuclear transfer.
Meanwhile, inside laboratories, medical school researchers made important discoveries that advanced ideas about how to use stem cells to treat disease.
Gary Steinberg, MD, professor of neurosurgery, published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science describing how human fetal neural stem cells were able to fill the gaps left in the brains of adult rats after an induced stroke. Steinberg has also been testing whether embryonic stem cells may be useful as a possible stroke treatment.
Stanford’s stem cell researchers also made an important advance in understanding the interplay between stem cells and cancer. Some previous work had found that cancers of the brain and blood occur when normal adult cells take on stem cell properties and divide indefinitely.
Following this line of research, Catriona Jamieson, MD, PhD, an instructor in hematology, worked with Weissman and found the stem cell that underlies acute myelogenous leukemia. Finding these and other cancer stem cells could help identify drugs that specifically kill the cells that keep the cancer alive. Weissman is now collaborating with Stanford oncologists to identify cancer stem cells in other tissues.