Yale Scientists Underscore the Promise of Stem Cell Research
A few weeks after President Barack Obama rescinded a federal funding ban that had been in place since 2001, more than 600 individuals came to the StemConn 09 conference in New Haven to hear about the numerous scientific advances â€" many made in Yale and other Connecticut labs â€" in understanding how these versatile cells can transform into any cell in the human body.
(Media-Newswire.com) - New Haven, Conn. — Stem cell scientists at Yale had many reasons to celebrate last month, starting with the March 9 presidential order lifting restrictions on funding for human embryonic stem cell research.
A few weeks after President Barack Obama rescinded a federal funding ban that had been in place since 2001, more than 600 individuals came to the StemConn 09 conference in New Haven to hear about the numerous scientific advances — many made in Yale and other Connecticut labs — in understanding how these versatile cells can transform into any cell in the human body.
"The knowledge we have gained in the field is profound and exciting," Dr. Robert Alpern, dean of the Yale School of Medicine, told the StemConn audience.
Yale, the University of Connecticut and Wesleyan University are well positioned to apply for new research funding in part because of a 2005 state law designed specifically to circumvent the ban imposed by former President George W. Bush, said Alpern, who is also the Ensign Professor of Medicine.
The law called for a 10-year, $100 million investment to back stem cell research, and the commitment proved instrumental in the creation of the new Yale Stem Cell Center on Amistad Street and the recruitment of its director, Haifan Lin, said Alpern.
Connecticut's commitment has also helped Yale to recruit top-flight researchers from around the world and train dozens of young scientists in the technology of stem cell research, noted the dean. Thanks to two rounds of state funding, Yale researchers have been able to use embryonic stem cells to study potential treatments for Parkinson's Disease, how brain cells develop and how cancer spreads. As laboratories across the country wait for new federal grants supporting stem cell research, a new group of Yale scientists expect to receive another round of state funding in the coming months.
"Now is not the time to pull back on stem cell research, but to put our foot on the accelerator," said Lin at the conference. "We are in the middle of a stem cell revolution."
Despite the funding ban, noted Lin, scientists have made progress identifying the molecular events that accompany the differentiation of embryonic stem cells into specialized heart, muscle, stomach and brain cells. Now, he added, researchers expect to make greater strides in these areas, and to start to control that process for therapeutic purposes.
For instance, said Lin, Yale's Eugene Redmond is using so-called niche signaling, or molecules adjacent to stem cells that help direct their fate, to guide human embryonic cells to repair primate brains damaged by Parkinson's Disease.
Lin himself is an internationally reÂnowned expert on effects of a large class of small RNAs known as piRNAs. The behavior of these small RNAs defies the conventional wisdom of gene regulation. He is particularly interested in the role these RNAs may play in regulating how stem cells renew themselves, a growing area of research that had been previously unexplored.
The mystery of stem cell self-renewal also has become increasingly important as scientists continue to find evidence that stem cells play a role in the development of several different types of cancer, noted the Yale researcher. Controlling cancer stem cells — and, equally important, the surrounding cells which signal these harmful stem cells to multiply — is the subject of several lines of promising cancer research, Lin said.
"Without the signals, they must leave this paradise and are doomed to differentiate," Lin said. "So it may not be enough to simply block cancer stem cells."
Yale labs also continue to tackle the large-scale questions of stem cell biology, he noted. For instance, Natalia B. Ivanova, assistant professor of genetics, is investigating the multiple molecular mechanisms by which embryonic stem cells maintain their ability to become a variety of cell types.
Michael Snyder, the Lewis B. Cullman Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, and director of the Yale Center for Genomics and Proteomics, is using a $4 million state grant and some of the latest technology to study in great detail the steps genes and the proteins take on their journey from embryonic stem cells to neurons, Lin told the audience.
— By Bill Hathaway
PRESS CONTACT: Bill Hathaway 203-432-1322
Related Content
Release Date
This story was released on 2009-04-06. Please make sure to visit the official company or organization web site to learn more about the original release date. See our disclaimer for additional information.