Advanced cell tech.
Ex for 05/05/04
Topics in Nanobiotech- 2004
MVDuarte
What does Advanced Cell Tech. (ACT) do in Stem cells field?
I am attaching some articles about this question. Mainly, ACT was formed in 1994 and
involves 3 areas (cloning transgenic cows for medicines, cloning animal for use in cell
and tissue transplants and cloning human stem cells for medical work (…). Their
different achievements are underlined in the text.
Company behind the clones: Advanced Cell Technology
November 25, 2001 Posted: 7:56 PM EST (0056 GMT)
By Porter Anderson
CNN
(CNN) -- The controversy stirred by Sunday's news of human
embryonic cell cloning isn't new to officers of Advanced Cell
Technology Inc. in Worcester, Massachusetts.
ACT was formed in 1994 and has three areas of primary focus: cloning
transgenic cows for making human medicines in milk; cloning animals
for use in cell and tissue transplants, and cloning human stem cells for
medical work.
A gaur like these -- endangered Asian oxen
-- was cloned in January by ACT
researchers. It died 48 hours later of
dysentery the company said was unrelated
to the cloning.
In its statement on the human-embryo research -- results of which
were published in the Journal of Regenerative Medicine -- the
company's vice president of medical and scientific development, Dr.
Robert P. Lanza, foresaw criticism and said: "Our intention is not to
create cloned human beings, but rather to make lifesaving therapies
for a wide range of human disease conditions, including diabetes,
strokes, cancer, AIDS and neurodegenerative disorders such as
Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s
disease.”
How it was done
The technique used by Advanced
Cell Technology scientists is
called somatic cell nuclear
transfer, also referred to as
human therapeutic cloning.
A cell from a patient's body is
combined with an egg cell that
has had its DNA removed. This
reprograms the body cell's DNA
back to an embryonic state, and
stem cells identical to the patient's
are produced. Stem cells can
form any cell or tissue in the
human body.
Of eight eggs, two divided to form
early embryos composed of four
cells. One progressed to a six-cell
stage before it stopped dividing.
This breakthrough occurred
October 13, 2001.
Advanced cell tech.
Ex for 05/05/04
Topics in Nanobiotech- 2004
MVDuarte
Just days before the release of the human-embryo news, a different phase of
ACT's work was being challenged by Rudolf Jaenisch, a biologist and animal
cloning pioneer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Whitehead
Institute. The issue then was ACT's assertion that 24 surviving cloned cows (of
30) are "clinically ... normal."
Source: Advanced Cell
Technology Inc.
"To say they are normal is not correct," Jaenisch told Reuters. "They are normal by the criteria they (ACT researchers)
used. These criteria are very superficial." Jaenisch also noted that it took more than 400 implanted embryos to produce
the 30 cloned cows.
But ACT's team maintained the company's claim of the cloned cows' normality is correct: "We did not observe genetic
defects, immune deficiencies, gross obesity or other drastic abnormalities cited by other researchers," researchers wrote
in their report.
The New York Times described ACT in 1998 as a startup biotech firm wholly owned by Avian Farms, a Maine poultry
genetics company. ACT currently lists three subsidiaries of its own -- Cyagra, for work with livestock; Cima
Biotechnology, which focuses on avian cloning; and Em Tran (short for Embryo Transfer), which applies genetic
research to the interests of cattle breeders.
In its corporate profile, ACT characterizes itself as "a company engaged in the research and development of technologies
enabling the genetic manipulation of cells to produce transgenic animals for pharmaceutical protein production. The
company is also developing transgenic cloned cells and tissues for applications in cell and organ transplant therapy."
In other words, the company's stated interest is in gene manipulation in animals for the purpose of genetic therapy for
humans.
Its executive staff is headed by CEO Michael D. West; Jose Cibelli, vice president of research, and Lanza.
Under their direction, the company has produced a steady drumbeat of research announcements for four years:
-- October 1997: ACT and Genzyme Transgenics Corp. announced a joint effort to produce "human therapeutic proteins
in the milk of cloned transgenic cattle."
-- January 1998: The births of Charlie and George, two calves created by combining cloning techniques and genetic
engineering, were announced as the culmination of four years' research by ACT's Steven Stice and the University of
Massachusetts' James Robl.
-- April 1998: ACT and University of Colorado researchers announced
that they'd successfully treated "Parkinsonism in rats by using fetal
brain cells from cloned cows."
-- November 1998: ACT announced the development of a method of
producing "primitive human embryonic stem cells through nuclear
transfer techniques" -- cloning. In August 1999, the company
announced that a patent had been issued for this method to the
University of Massachusetts with ACT as the exclusive licensee.
-- April 2000: ACT announced in the journal Science that it had been
able to reverse the natural deterioration over time of "telomeres," or
ends of chromosomes -- the statement termed this "the successful
reversal of the aging process in cells. Our results show that cloning
George and Charlie are two of Advanced
actually has the potential to reverse the aging of cells,” said Lanza. “This
Cell Technology's cloned cows.
has profound implications for treating age-related disease and for
understanding the actual mechanisms behind the aging process.”
-- October 2000: ACT announced what it said was the first successful cloning of an endangered animal to late-stage fetal
development. The animal in question was a guar, a large wild ox found in Southeast Asia. ACT also announced a contract
with the government of Spain to clone the extinct bucardo mountain goat (the last of these goats died in January 2000
and tissue was preserved).
-- January 2001: ACT reported the birth of Noah, a cloned baby bull gaur which died 48 hours later of "a common
dysentery likely unrelated to cloning."
-- March 2001: Cyagra -- the livestock division of ACT -- reported the births of two cloned calves at the University of
Pennsylvania College of Veterinary Medicine.
Advanced cell tech.
Ex for 05/05/04
Topics in Nanobiotech- 2004
MVDuarte
-- October 2001: ACT announced a $1.9 million research grant from the
National Institute of Standards and Technology. The distinction about
this grant's focus is in "transdifferentiation," which involves using a
person's own skin cells -- rather than animal cells or embryonic stem
cells -- to generate new cells for transplants back into same person. The
aim here is to reduce the possibility of immune rejection of transplanted
cells.
ACT's board structure includes an Ethics Advisory Board. Among its
members are Ronald Green, a professor of religion and director of
Dartmouth College's Ethics Institute; Dr. Kenneth Goodman, who
directs the University of Miami's Bioethics Program; and Carol Tauer,
senior scholar with the Minnesota Center for Health Care Ethics.
To clone the gaur, scientists placed a gaur
nucleus inside the egg cell of a cow.
Advanced cell tech.
Ex for 05/05/04
Topics in Nanobiotech- 2004
MVDuarte
BBC News
Friday, 30 November, 2001, 19:36 GMT
Breakthrough for stem cell research
Two separate teams made the brain cell breakthrough
By BBC News Online's Ivan
Noble
A major breakthrough in stem cell research has been announced that makes
treatments for degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's look
more feasible.
Two separate teams of scientists have succeeded in making
stem cells originally derived from human embryos turn into
It is an
brain cells.
important step
Researchers currently believe it may be possible to transplant
such newly-created brain cells into brain disease sufferers.
The announcement shows that at least the first stage of this
procedure is possible.
Su-Chun Zhang
Double success
"It is an important step because the first step is to get stem cells to become
specialised cells," Su-Chun Zhang, of the Waisman Center at the University of
Wisconsin, US, told BBC News Online.
"We've got them to become specialised brain cells," he said.
Dr Zhang is the lead author of a paper in the journal Nature Biotechnology
describing the work done at the Waisman Center.
Another successful attempt to generate brain cells is reported in the same journal
at the same time by Benjamin E Reubinoff, of Hadassah University Hospital in
Jerusalem, Israel, and his colleagues.
Dr Zhang said his team was able to encourage stem cells to generate brain cells in
laboratory culture dishes.
Directed growth
Advanced cell tech.
Ex for 05/05/04
Topics in Nanobiotech- 2004
MVDuarte
When they then transplanted the brand new human brain cells into young mice
they found that the cells continued to develop.
They are now trying to cultivate more sophisticated cells, closer to the kind that
would be needed for any medical use.
"The cells we grew are called neuroprecursors.
"What we are doing now is to try to direct these neuroprecursors to further
generate specialised cells, for example dopamine neurons for Parkinson's disease...
or glia cells for multiple sclerosis," Dr Zhang said.
Controversy
The cells in Dr Zhang's experiment came from an established cell line.
Such lines are maintained for research work and are descended from cells originally
taken from a human embryo not long after fertilisation.
Work in the field is seen as controversial because some groups object to the
destruction of human embryos however early in their development.
Most controversial is the idea of therapeutic cloning, which would involve the
creation of human embryos by cloning and their subsequent disposal once stem
cells are removed.
This approach would permit the creation of cells more likely to be accepted by a
patient's immune system.
However, critics argue that development of such techniques would aid anyone
wanting to use cloning to create live human beings.
Proponents of research on embryos argue that unless studies like those published
on Friday are carried out, time will be lost in the search for treatments for
distressing, incurable and fatal conditions.