Showing papers on "Totipotent published in 2007"

Non-embryonic totipotent blastomere-like stem cells and methods therefor

Abstract: Human non-embryonic adult totipotent and pluripotent stem cells are isolated in a simplified serum-free and feeder cell-free process. Most remarkably, certain stem cells, and especially BLSCs, are extremely small, fail to exclude trypan blue, but are nevertheless able to proliferate from even high dilutions. Therefore, so obtained stem cells can be used to prepare true monoclonal stem cell populations, which are useful in numerous uses, including therapeutic, prophylactic, diagnostic, and research uses.

Embryonic Stem Cell Patents and Human Dignity

Abstract: This article examines the assertion that human embryonic stem cells patents are immoral because they violate human dignity. After analyzing the concept of human dignity and its role in bioethics debates, this article argues that patents on human embryos or totipotent embryonic stem cells violate human dignity, but that patents on pluripotent or multipotent stem cells do not. Since patents on pluripotent or multipotent stem cells may still threaten human dignity by encouraging people to treat embryos as property, patent agencies should carefully monitor and control these patents to ensure that patents are not inadvertently awarded on embryos or totipotent stem cells.

Totipotent, pluripotent or unipotent stem cells: a complex regulatory enigma and fascinating biology.

Abstract: The search for sources of human stem cells has become a controversial topic from an ethical point of view primarily as it has required the destruction of human embryos. The development of alternative techniques that enable the generation of pluripotent stem cells from adult cells has opened new avenues of research but the generation of such cells has again been controversial since it requires the use of human eggs, using a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer. Since the cells so generated have a very small potential to generate an "embryo" and since the production of the cell lines requires destruction of that "embryo", a further ethical issue arises. This article discusses these issues and suggests a framework that may assist their consideration. Finally, the article reviews some recent developments that have the potential to remove the need for the use of eggs or embryos in the generation of stem cell lines and highlights the danger of developing legislation on only our current knowledge.

Commentary: is totipotency of a human cell a sufficient reason to exclude its patentability under the European law?

Abstract: This article argues that totipotent character of human totipotent cells—defined as the capacity of a cell “to differentiate into all somatic lineages (ectoderm, mesoderm, endoderm), the germ line and extra-embryonic tissues such as the placenta”—is not a sufficient reason to exclude their patentability on the basis of Article 5(1) of the Directive 98/44/EC on the Legal Protection of Biotechnological Inventions (Biopatent Directive), which maintains that “the human body, at the various stages of its formation and development, […] cannot constitute patentable inventions.” Since human totipotent cells have both the potential to generate an entire new organism or to generate only different tissues or organs of an organism, they simultaneously fit the definition of the unpatentable human body at the earliest stage of its formation as well as of an element of the human body, which “may constitute a patentable invention” pursuant to Article 5(2) of the Biopatent Directive, whether that element is isolated from the human body or otherwise produced by means of a technical process. Therefore, this article suggests that, when evaluating patentability of human totipotent cells, they should be further evaluated according to their location and their method of derivation (i.e., whether human totipotent cells are located in the human body, whether they are isolated from the human body, or whether they are produced otherwise by means of a technical process). Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest is found at the end of this article.

Stem Cells and the Art of Mesenchymal Maintenance

Abstract: The most promising emergent medical technology of the early twenty-first century is stem-cell therapeutics Traditionally, stem cells possess two important characteristics: the ability to undergo nearly unlimited self-renewal and the capability to differentiate into many (multipotent/pluripotent) or all (totipotent) mature cell phenotypes The existence of stem cells and their ability to generate every tissue of the body during embryonic development has been known for many years Transplant experiments performed in the 1970s, in which single stem cells were injected into early-stage blastulas, produced a chimera of donor and recipient cells in each organ of the resultant animal [29, 47]