Reflection
While writing this paper I found many connections and similarities between my topic and my life. Stem cells are controversial topic and I can see the ethical issues that some people have with them. IN my humanities class we discussed how do you define life and who has the right to take away a life. It connected with Biology just in a different way. In Biology we were applying the empirical method to how we define life. It showed me how many fields of study can be connected. I also found that by doing this paper was beneficial to me because I found other sources of reliable information like scientific journals, instead of just Wikipedia.
Research Paper
Stem Cells to Cure Macular Degeneration
Nathan Green
November 18, 2015
Stem cells are unspecialized cells that are derived from embryos, fetuses, or adults, which that retain the capacity to develop into specialized cells and regenerate themselves. Stem cells can be whatever you want them to be if you place them in that environment. These unspecialized cells could be used to help with all sorts of diseases and medical applications. Many advances have been made in the recent years to apply these cells into real world problems. One of many problems a majority of humans will experience will be macular degeneration. Macular degeneration is an eye disease that causes loss of vision and with no cure. This chronic disease can only be somewhat treated. Recently in October of this year (2015) a patient received the first treatment of embryonic stem cells to the eye and next month they will have the results of what happened.
Macular degeneration is a condition of the macula lutea in the eye. The macula lutea area plays a vital role in the retina that deals with sharp and clear vision. Macular degeneration impairs the central part of the field of vision and leaves the peripherals not affected. Age-related macular degeneration is the loss of sight with age and is the number one cause of severe vision loss in the elderly. There are two types of age-related macular degeneration: dry, which is a majority of the cases, and wet, which has more severe affects. Dry age-related macular degeneration is slow developing and cause moderate vision loss. You can spot dry age-related macular degeneration by the thinning of macular tissue, loss of pigmentation, and the occurrence of yellowish fatty deposits on the macula. Wet age-related macular degeneration involves proliferation of abnormal blood vessels under the macula. The vessels are fragile and leak blood and fluid. Vision impairment occurs more quickly in wet age-related macular degeneration.
There are three types of stem cells embryonic, adult, and IPSC. The first are embryonic, stems cells that are derived from the inner cell mass of blastocysts of the preimplantation-stage embryos. The stem cells require signals to differentiate to become the desired cell type. A problem with this is if it is transplanted into a patient without the right signals, they will differentiate into many cells of what they want, causing tumors to form. Extracting the stem cells from an embryo will also destroy the organism. The second stem cell is adult stem cells, which are relatively rare and are obtained in the organ of origin. To obtain these stem cells they just take them from the desired area. The third type of stem cell is IPSC or Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell. These stem cells are somatic cells that have been genetically reprogrammed to an embryotic stem cell-like state by being forced to express gene important properties of embryotic stem cells. These stem cells are useful in drug development and disease modeling. A major problem with all of these stem cell options is rejection of the new cells in a body after transplantation. With the eye transplant, however, there is not an all-out attack from the immune system.
This project has been a 10 year project of London’s Project to Cure Cancer. Scientists take one single embryotic stem cell and from that make a sheet of cells in a lab. They then transplant that sheet into the back of the eye. Then they have to wait, which is what they are doing now. By taking one single cell and growing sheets in a lab they have begun to start a manufactured process by which the surgery can be done with ease. The reason they used embryotic stem cells as opposed to the other types is because of their unlimited ability to regenerate and differentiate. In animals they have conducted preclinical tests and no tumors were found after 6-15 months of monitoring, making embryotic stem cells another reason to use them.
The first patients who participated are suffering from wet age-related macular degeneration. The support cells in the eye that get rid of the junk and allow the function part of seeing have died in these patients with wet age-related macular degeneration. These patients also have had complete loss of vision within 6 weeks of contracting the disease. The reason scientist chose a wet age-related macular degeneration patient was to see if stem cell therapy could cure the vision loss. If it can cure wet age-related macular degeneration then applying this to therapy for dry age-related macular degeneration will be much easier. The reason it will be much easier in dry age-related macular degeneration is because dry age-related macular degeneration progresses much slower than wet age-related macular degeneration. The results will be available this December and if it continues to go as well as it is, then there will be a cure for macular degeneration which affects many people around the world.
Literature Cited
Kanemura, H., Go, M. J., Shikamura, M., Nishishita, N., Sakai, N., Kamao, H., & ... Kawamata, S. (2014). Tumorigenicity Studies of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell (iPSC)-Derived Retinal Pigment Epithelium (RPE) for the Treatment of Age-Related Macular Degeneration. Plos ONE, 9(1), 1-11. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0085336
Macular Degeneration. (2015). Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia, 1p. 1.
Scientists treat age-related macular degeneration with stem cells. (2009). Journal of Visual Impairment & Blindness, 103(7), 439-440 2p.