New STAP stem cells questioned

Michael Cook
16 Feb 2014
Reproduced with Permission
BioEdge

After the high tide of enthusiasm comes the ebb tide of scepticism. The new STAP cells discovered by a team of researchers from Japan and Boston are being questioned by stem cell scientists.

In a paper published in Nature in January, the authors claimed that subjecting ordinary cells to stress will make them revert to a state in which they can make any cell in the body. "It's a startling result that makes you stand up and go, 'Wow!'" said George Q. Daley, a leading stem cell researcher at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

But in his stem cell blog, Paul Knoepfler, a leading stem cell scientist at the University of California, Davis, is sceptical. He poses five questions that need to be asked.

However, the debate about the experiment should be settled quickly. As Knoepfler notes, "we'll know if STAP cells are the real deal within as short as two months because quite a few labs are now trying the technique.

Nobel laureate Shinya Yamanaka also stepped into the debate, swatting away reports that STAP cell were a safer alternative to the stem cell he developed in 2007, induced pluripotent stem cells.

"What hurt us were a lot of reports that concluded STAP cells are safer than iPS cells. The iPS cells announced in 2006 using mice and the iPS cells created now use totally different techniques. I find it quite regrettable that the reports made comparisons with the old technique."

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