TOKYO - A Japanese stem cell scientist, under pressure over inconsistencies in her groundbreaking research, has agreed to retract one of the two papers published in the respected journal Nature, reports said Thursday.

Haruko Obokata, 30, was feted after unveiling research that appeared to show a straightforward way to re-programme adult cells to become a kind of stem cell.

Stem cells are precursors that are capable of developing into any other cell in the human body, and a readily manufacturable supply of them could one day help meet a need for transplant tissues, or even whole organs.

But within weeks of her paper on so-called Stimulus-Triggered Acquisition of Pluripotency (STAP) cells being published, questions began to emerge, with fellow scientists saying they could not replicate her results.

Riken, the respected research institute that sponsored the study, has urged her to withdraw her two papers, after concluding that she fabricated at least some of the data.

Obokata has agreed with her co-authors to a partial retraction, saying: "I don't oppose withdrawing one of the" papers, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun, Kyodo News and other media.

But her lawyer said that she won't withdraw the main paper, and insists she successfully created STAP cells on several occasions.

The paper to be withdrawn noted the versatility of the cells, while the other paper summed up the cells' characteristics and method of making them.

Immediate confirmation of the news reports were not available.

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Japan scientist to retract one stem cell paper

Disabled mice regained the ability to walk less than two weeks after receiving human neural stem cells (Photo: Shutterstock)

When scientists at the University of Utah injected human stem cells into mice disabled by a condition similar to multiple sclerosis, they expected the cells to be rejected by the animals' bodies. It turned out that the cells were indeed rejected, but not before they got the mice walking again. The unexpected finding could have major implications for human MS sufferers.

In multiple sclerosis, the body's immune system attacks the myelin sheath that covers and insulates nerve fibers in the spinal cord, brain and optic nerve. With that insulation gone, the nerves short-circuit and malfunction, often compromising the patient's ability to walk among other things.

In the U Utah study (which was begun at the University of California, Irvine) human neural stem cells were grown in a Petri dish, then injected into the afflicted mice. The cells were grown under less crowded conditions than is usual, which reportedly resulted in their being "extremely potent."

As early as one week after being injected, there was no sign of the cells in the animals' bodies evidence that they had been rejected, as was assumed would happen. Within 10 to 14 days, however, the mice were walking and running. After six months, they still hadn't regressed.

This was reportedly due to the fact that the stem cells emitted chemical signals that instructed the rodents' own cells to repair the damaged myelin. Stem cells grown under the same conditions have since been shown to produce similar results, in tests performed by different laboratories.

Additional mouse trials are now planned to assess the safety and durability of the treatment, with hopes for human clinical trials down the road. "We want to try to move as quickly and carefully as possible," said Dr. Tom Lane, who led the study along with Dr. Jeanne Loring from the Center for Regenerative Medicine at The Scripps Research Institute. "I would love to see something that could promote repair and ease the burden that patients with MS have."

A paper on the research was recently published in the journal Stem Cell Reports.

Source: University of Utah

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Human stem cell treatment gets mice with MS-like condition walking again

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Researchers investigating the use of human menstrual blood-derived mesenchymal cells (MBMCs) as culture 'feeder layers' found that MBMCs can replace animal-derived feeder systems in human embryonic stem cell culture systems and support their undifferentiated growth, while helping the cells proliferate and survive. For medical transplantation, human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) may need to remain "undifferentiated" and the experimenter's technique preserves the undifferentiated nature of hESCs destined for transplantation and also prevents potential animal cell contamination.

To be suitable for medical transplantation, one idea is that human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) need to remain "undifferentiated" i.e. they are not changing into other cell types. In determining the best way to culture hESCs so that they remain undifferentiated and also grow, proliferate and survive, researchers have used blood cell "feeder-layer" cultures using animal-derived feeder cells, often from mice (mouse embryonic fibroblasts [MEFs]). This approach has, however, been associated with a variety of contamination problems, including pathogen and viral transmission.

To avoid contamination problems, a Brazilian research team has investigated the use of human menstrual blood-derived mesenchymal cells (MBMCs) as feeder layers and found that "MBMCs can replace animal-derived feeder systems in human embryonic stem cell culture systems and support their growth in an undifferentiated stage."

The study will be published in a future issue of Cell Medicine, but is currently freely available on-line as an unedited early e-pub.

"Human embryonic stem cells present a continuous proliferation in an undifferentiated state, resulting in an unlimited amount of cells with the potential to differentiate toward any type of cell in the human body," said study corresponding author Dr. Regina Coeli dos Santos Goldenberg of the Instituto de Biofisica Carlos Chagas Filho, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. "These characteristics make hESCs good candidates for cell based therapies."

Feeder-layers for hESCs comprised of MEFs have been efficiently used for decades but, because of the clinical drawbacks, the authors subsequently experimented with human menstrual blood cells as a potential replacement for animal-derived feeder-layers, not only for negating the contamination issues, but also because human menstrual blood is so accessible. MBMCs are without ethical encumbrances and shortages, nor are they difficult to access - a problem with other human cells, such as umbilical cord blood cells, adult bone marrow cells or placenta cells.

"Menstrual blood is derived from uterine tissues," explained the researchers. "These cells are widely available 12 times a year from women of child-bearing age. The cells are easily obtained, possess the capability of long-term proliferation and are clinically compatible with hESCs-derived cells."

The researchers found that their culture system using MBMCs as a feeder-layer for hESCs are the "closest and more suitable alternative to animal-free conditions for growing hESCs" and a "good candidate for large-expansion of cells for clinical application." They also found no difference in growth factor expression when comparing the use of growth factors in both the standard feeder system using animal cells and the feeder system they tested using hESCs.

"It is also noteworthy to highlight that our group reported the rapid and efficient generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from MBMCs, indicating that these cells can be used as a model to study patient-specific disease and that in the future they might be used in clinical settings."

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Researchers find human menstrual blood-derived cells 'feed' embryonic stem cells

Julia Matsumoto was diagnosed with a rare condition called optic neuritis that caused her to go completely blind at the age of 31 A liposuction procedure that involved extracting stem cells from Matsumoto's fat helped Matsumoto regain her vision in less than four days There is a debate as to whether it was the difficult steroid therapy or the stem cells that helped Matsumoto gain her vision back

By Alexandra Klausner

Published: 20:09 EST, 28 May 2014 | Updated: 20:09 EST, 28 May 2014

One woman with a rare condition called optic neuritis says that liposuction not only helped her lose weight, stopped her from going blind.

Julia Matsumoto was diagnosed with a rare condition called optic neuritis that caused her to go completely blind at the age of 31.

A liposuction procedure that involved extracting stem cells from Matsumoto's fat and placing them back in her body helped Matsumoto regain her vision in four days.

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Julia Matsumoto thought she'd never be able to see again but a rare stem cell therapy involving liposuction helped her regain her vision in less that three days

Doctors performed liposuction on Julia's stomach and then harvested the stem cells in her fat

According to Medical News Today, 'Adult stem cells can divide or self-renew indefinitely, enabling them to generate a range of cell types from the originating organ or even regenerate the entire original organ.'

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Woman on the verge of blindness claims LIPOSUCTION helped her to see again once doctors harvested the stem cells from ...

The European Commission has, as predicted, turned down a request from more than 1.7 million citizens for new legislation to ban the funding of research using human embryonic stem cells, including those which do not involve destruction of new embryos.

Scientists are relieved. It is a good decision for us and for Europe, says stem-cell researcher Elena Cattaneo of the University of Milan, Italy, who works on Huntingtons disease. But One of Us, the organization that led the petition, claims on its website that the Commission has exercised an unjustifiable veto which flouts the democratic procedure.

The One of Us petition was among the first to be presented within the Commissions new European Citizens Initiatives (ECIs) scheme, launched two years ago in a bid to widen participatory democracy. The ECIs have drawn criticism for their potential to be exploited by pressure groups wishing to re-open recently closed debates. (Natures editorial pages joined the critics: see The democracy carousel.)

Any European Citizens Initiative which can muster more than a million signatures across at least seven EU countries automatically triggers a parliamentary hearing and a formal response from the Commission.

The parliamentary hearing for the One of Us initiative took place on 10 April.

Today the Commission published its reasoning for not proposing new legislation. It said that the EU Council of Member States and the European Parliament had last year debated the issue thoroughly, and no new information was available to warrant a return to the debate so soon. At the time, member states and parliament both agreed that stem-cell research held great promise for currently incurable diseases such as Parkinsons disease and it was thus in the public interest to support it. They also agreed that human embryonic stem cells are still sometimes required in such research.

In its statement, the Commission further pointed out that its funding rules already preclude active destruction of new embryos and require strict oversight of experiments.

The petitioners had referred to a 2011 judgement of the European Court of Justice, which ruled patenting of inventions involving cells derived from human embryos to be illegal. But the Commission said that ruling did not apply to research.

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European Commission rejects petition on embryonic stem cells