The scientifically naive Vatican finds the concept of adult stem cells attractive simply because embryos are not involved — yet it ignores the ethical implications of false hope.
Nature was appalled in April by the heavy-handed tactics of the Catholic church in its public courtship of New York-based company Neostem, which is pushing Very Small Embryonic-Like stem cells (VSELs) to clinical trial — prematurely, in the eyes of many scientists.
The company itself acknowledges the "conflicting and controversial data" (mainly that other labs following their protocol cannot reproduce their results).
‘‘We found that every step of the way, we could not confirm the results of the Ratajczak group,’’ says Irving Weissman, Director of the Stanford Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and the senior author of an article in Stem Cell Reports this week (Stanford press release available here).
As well as being dismissive of this discordant body of literature, the company is now looking to move to clinical trial with the cells, to which the company acquired worldwide exclusive technology rights in 2007.
Henry Nichols, writing for Cell Stem Cell warns that pushing on the commercial while disregarding the research basis of VSELs could be harmful beyond the letdown to patients, potentially damaging the field as a whole. ■ Henry Nichols, VSELs: Is Ideology Overtaking Science? Cell Stem Cell, vol 13 (2013) ■ Miyanishi et al., Do Pluripotent Stem Cells Exist in Adult Mice as Very Small Embryonic Stem Cells?OA Stem Cell Reports, vol 1 (2013)