• Question: Once the stem cells are in your body, how would you prevent it from dividing too many times causing cancer?

    Asked by syed to Aoife, Dave, Matt, Tomasz on 19 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Aoife O'Shaughnessy-Kirwan

      Aoife O'Shaughnessy-Kirwan answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      Hi syed,
      I guess the aim if we are to treat disease with stem cells is to ensure that they turn into the right type of cells/cells that are needed right away, i.e. that they don’t spend time wondering around looking for mischief! So as long as we are happy the cells will do this and don’t contain any funny mutations or viruses everything should be fine : )

    • Photo: Matthew Tomlinson

      Matthew Tomlinson answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      That is a really good question, in fact one of the tests for stem cells is to see if they make these uncontrolled masses of cells called teratomas, which is basically cancer. In some recent mouse experiments researchers tried to create induced pluripotent stem cells in mice, and the test for this was teratoma formation, which they saw. I think the way to prevent excessive division is to try and make (or differentiate) the cells into the type of cell you are interested in, or one which can then become that cell type. This is because the more differentiated a cell is, the less it divides. Recently a group from Korea published some results which showed that using a chemical treatment can remove undifferentiated cells from a mixture of cells, potentially giving another way of using embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells in therapy.

      The other way to avoid the problem of excessive division is to use adult stem cells, these cells cannot divide excessively so don’t cause cancer. The downside to them is that each stem cell type can only make a limited number of other cell types, but if, like me, you’re interested in making bone then that’s not a problem.

    • Photo: David Christensen

      David Christensen answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      I think the easiest way to stop this is by producing the cells that will be needed for the disease treatment in a lab and then transplanting those cells/organ into the patient rather than transplanting in stem cells and hoping they become the cell type you want them to become.

      This is a fairly serious worry though, so good question syed!

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