Shinya Yamanaka, a Kyoto University scientist, said any ordinary laboratory has the means to generate such cells, which could be used “in the near future” to make human eggs and sperm — a step on the way to creating a human clone.

“The technology is very simple,” said Yamanaka, who published his findings last fall at the same time a U.S. research team released similar results. “You don’t need any special equipment.”

“We can do something bad by using that ability,” he told reporters in Tokyo. “That’s why I think we need regulation.”

The new technique reprograms human skin cells so they behave like embryonic stem cells, which can morph into all kinds of tissue, such as heart and nerve cells.

The results — also reached by a team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison — were hailed as a breakthrough because the new cells avoid the complex and highly controversial idea of extracting stem cells from cloned human embryos.

Yamanaka said his university was still exploring whether the new cells were subject to Japan’s highly restrictive law on embryonic stem cell research. He said he hoped such tough restrictions would not apply, though new and effective rules will be needed to regulate the new technology.

Still, the technique — which has not yet been patented — faces important hurdles before it could be used to treat humans safely.

Yamanaka’s team used viruses to convert skin cells to the new cells, called “induced pluripotent stem cells,” or IPS cells. That method, however, carries the risk of giving recipients cancer, and scientists are hard at work looking for a method that avoids the use of viruses.

Another hurdle is time. It takes about three months to generate IPS cells and make them into specific tissue — far too long for spinal cord injury patients, for example, who typically need transplants within 10 days of their injury.

To counter that, Yamanaka said he envisions the creation of public “banks” where IPS cells supplied by donors covering the span of gene types would be readily available for patients.

Subscribe to The China Post and save.  Click hereSharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Enter your comments - 800 characters max

Receive China Post promos

Respond to this email