Embryonic Stem Cell Research

Embryonic Stem Cell Research

James Thompson is a developmental biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a professor in the UW-Madison Medical School, and the chief pathologist at the Wisconsin Regional Primate Research Center on the UW-Madison campus. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a B.S. in biophysics at the University of Illinois in 1981. He received his doctorate in veterinary medicine from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985, and his doctorate in molecular biology in1988. He and his associates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison reported the first isolation of embryonic stem cell lines from a non-human primate in 1995. In 1998 Thompson led the same group to the first successful isolation of human embryonic stem cell lines.

Stem cells are nonspecific cells. They have the ability to make exact copies of themselves indefinitely. The two basic stem cells types are adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells (ESC). Researchers prefer embryonic stem cells because adult stem cells are already specialized, and embryonic stem cells are undifferentiated and are able to form any of the 220 adult stem cells. Embryonic stem cells come from the inner cell mass of fertilized embryos 3-5 days old called blastocysts. A blastocyst is a sphere made up of an outer layer of cells and a cluster of interior cells. Embryos used are taken from either aborted fetuses or fertilized eggs left over from in vetro-fertilization. During the extraction process of the stem cell the embryo is destroyed. Though ESC have great potential and offer many medical benefits stem cell research should not be allowed to progress in today's society for moral and religious reasons concerning the derivation of these stem cells.

Embryonic stem cells are of great interest to researchers because they have so much medical potential. The potential of the body's tissue cells to reproduce is very limited. They may culture under laboratory condition a few times then die, but stem cells are capable of reproducing indefinitely. Because Embryonic stem cells are derived from the inner cell mass of an early embryo they are pluripotent, which means they have the ability to develop into many different cell types of the body.