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iPS cell therapy coverage roundup

As we reported yesterday, a team from Rudy Jaenisch's lab at the Whitehead Institute, along with a group led by Tim Townes at UAB, announced in Science that it has used induced pluripotent stem cells to treat sickle cell anemia in mice.

+ Jaenisch tells the Washington Post's Rick Weiss that the problem of how to reprogram the skin cells without using viruses is "the big issue." (The retroviruses used can introduce errors into the cells' DNA). Jaenisch also reiterates his support of work on embryonic stem cells. "All the progress in this field was only possible because we had embryonic stem cells to work with first. We need to make more ES cells and really define which are going to be the best ones for different applications," Jaenisch tells Weiss.

+ The Whithead team tried to get around part of the cancer problem by deleting one of the genes used to induce pluripotency. (The gene seems to play a role in tumor formation.) But Jacob Hanna, the lead author of the paper in Science, tells Reuters' Julie Steenhuysen that removal of that gene "is far from solving the problem." Hanna also tells Reuters that embryonic stem cells are "the gold standard."

+ ACT's Robert Lanza tells New Scientist's Andy Coghlan, "This study shows how incredibly valuable this technology could be for human therapy, and in particular for repairing human genetic defects." But Lanza cautions this approach could be much more difficult if treatment required replacing most or all of a patient's cells with altered versions.

+ Townes tells the AP's Lauren Neergaard that he will next be testing to see if human cells from sickle cell patients can similarly be reprogrammed. (Actually using them for treatment is still a ways off because of the virus issue.)

+ The University of Cambridge's Azim Surani strikes a note of caution in a BBC report: "But in addition to the safety concerns, we have to be cautious about extrapolating from mouse studies to humans. The mouse IPS cells are not identical to human IPS cells. We need more research. There are still significant hurdles to overcome."

+ Of using this approach in humans, Jaenisch tells Bloomberg's Rob Waters: "If I were to select a disease that would most likely succeed first, it would be some blood disease. I would not make a prediction when, but I think it will be sooner than we think."

+ Small discrepancy in quotes from Jaenisch about the effectiveness of the therapy in mice. New Scientist quotes him saying of the mice "All improved to almost normal. These mice are basically cured." The Washington Post quotes him saying, "All the parameters we can measure are now normal. The mice are cured."

+ There's a somewhat odd absence of this story in the New York Times. As of 10 am today the only mention of this story on the NYT site is an AP article toward the bottom of its science page.