A new paper from Shoukhrat Mitalipov’s lab on stem cell mitochondria points to a pattern whereby induced pluripotent stem (IPS) cells tend to have more problems if they are from older patients. What does this paper mean for the stem cell field and could it impact more specifically the clinical applications of IPS cells? The new paper Kang, et al is entitled “Age-Related Accumulation of Somatic Mitochondrial DNA Mutations in Adult-Derived Human iPSCs”. This paper reminds us of the very important realities that mitochondria are …Read More
Rebecca Tippner-Hedges
In a new, thought-provoking paper today in Nature, Shoukhrat Mitalipov and a multi-institutional team report a significant advance toward potential novel ways to treat mitochondrial diseases. What are these illnesses? Mitochondrial diseases are rare, but devastating disorders caused by genetic mutations. Today they are largely impossible to treat in meaningful ways other than palliative care. Some of the mutations causing these diseases are in nuclear DNA, while others are in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). The main current approach to prevention is preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) …Read More
Just how good are human embryonic stem (ES) cells made by therapeutic cloning via nuclear transfer? How do they compare to induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells or traditional ES cells made from IVF embryos? A new paper in Nature directly tackles these key questions, but first a bit of context. Three separate groups have now successfully made ES cells using somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), with the successful technique first reported by the lab of Shoukhrat Mitalipov at OHSU last year. I have reviewed those three therapeutic cloning papers …Read More