• Question: Can iPS cells eliminate the need for embryonic stem cells in research?

    Asked by origoody to Anzy, Aoife, Dave, Matt, Tomasz on 12 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Matthew Tomlinson

      Matthew Tomlinson answered on 12 Nov 2013:

      Hi origoody

      That’s a really good question! I think iPS cells and ES cells are good for different things. ES cells are very useful for studying human development, they show us how humans develop and give insights into how we can direct stem cell therapies in patients. iPS cells on the other hand are great for studying diseases in the lab which we cannot use other cells for, for example genetic conditions like Huntingdon’s Chorea where we can take a patients skin cell and reprogram it to become a nerve cell. This allows more in depth study of this disease. I also think iPS will be used more and more as a therapy because we will be able to turn a patients own cells into the stem cells we need to treat them.

      So overall, I don’t think iPS cells will eliminate the need for ES cells but they give us different ways to look at disease and repair.

    • Photo: Aoife O'Shaughnessy-Kirwan

      Aoife O'Shaughnessy-Kirwan answered on 12 Nov 2013:

      Hi origoody,
      I have to echo what Matt’s said. When iPS cells are being made they go thru’ a sort of “black box” phase, that is we don’t know exactly what’s going on during this time. On the other hand lots of work has been done to examine ES cells as they turn into other cell types so we definitely have more info on this process. The main thing iPS cells are very useful for right now is as Matt said, disease research and to test drugs. For example I know someone taking some skin cells from patients with Downs syndrome, turning them into iPS cells and then seeing is there a type of drug that would prevent patients developing early onset dementia. In the future, once we have all the info we can get about iPS cells they will probably be a good option for transplantion/therapy as there will be no rejection issues if we use the patients own skin cells to start with.

    • Photo: David Christensen

      David Christensen answered on 12 Nov 2013:

      I’m going to disagree with the others actually. Sort of.

      At the moment, research on both iPS cells and embryonic stem cells is really important, but a lot of research focusses on how to make iPS cells that are basically identical to embryonic stem cells. If, at some point in the future, we can make iPS cells that are “perfectly” like embryonic stem cells and we have really good control over them, so that we can make them into any cell type, then we will not need to study embryonic stem cells any more. I think we are a long way from this now, so I don’t think there is any reason to stop research with embryonic stem cells now, but I think iPS cells might eliminate the need for embryonic stem cell research in the future.

      To address Matt’s point about research on human development: The idea is that embryonic stem cells come from embryos, so we can learn about embryos by looking at embryonic stem cells. This is true, but embryos have other cells in them as well as the cells that we get embryonic stem cells from (and actually, I don’t think the embryonic stem cells we use in the lab are exactly like any of the cells in a normal embryo). This means that we need to study whole embryos to learn most about development and studying only embryonic stem cells can’t teach us everything. Also, if we can make iPS cells behave exactly like embryonic stem cells, then there’s no need for embryonic stem cells for studying embryos anyway!

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