Stem cell finding becomes political football in Senate

The cloning issue made a reappearance in the US Senate last week, as a subcommittee heard arguments for and against a proposed ban on all forms of human cloning which was passed in Congress last year. A bill, sponsored by Republican Sam Brownback, will seek to outlaw all cloning, whilst competing bills would allow the creation of cloned embryos for research.

As the opposing camps debated the issue, scientific research came to light which will no doubt be used to argue against human embryo stem cell research. Catherine M Verfaillie, of the University of Minnesota, has come across something called a multipotent adult progenitor cell (MAPC) which is found in the adult body but seems to have very similar properties to those of embryonic stem cells. The cells, which were extracted from the bone marrow of mice, rats and humans in a series of studies, seem to grow indefinitely in culture and can differentiate into a wide range of cell types such as muscle, cartilage, bone, liver and brain cells.

Although Verfaillie's research has not yet been published, it is the subject of a patent application that was unearthed by New Scientist magazine. But Verfaillie, whilst excited by her research, is reluctant to call this 'the ultimate cell', preferring a more cautious approach. For instance, it remains unclear whether these cells occur naturally in the body or their embryo-like properties were the result of culturing them in the laboratory. Verfaillie is also keen to distance herself from politicians such as Sam Brownback, who used her research to argue that 'science continues to prove that destructive embryonic stem cell research is unnecessary'. For her, the research 'does not mean we should eliminate a whole line of research'.