"Groundbreaking" Stem Cell Formation Technique Put to the Test

A controversial stem cell formation technique that can supposedly revert mature human cells back to the cellular equivalent to an embryonic stem cell is being tested in a U.S. laboratory to once and for all see if the technique is as "too good to be true" as most of the scientific community thinks it is.

A detailed report of the technique, which first sparked rumors as early as 2001, was finally published in the scientific peer-reviewed journal Nature at the start of this year, in late January. Since then, scientists have been debating whether or not the technique's remarkable results were merely a miraculous anomaly or a reproducible process.

The technique was developed by Dr. Charles Vicanti, who reportedly stumbled upon the discovery when experimenting with standard mature human cells at the University of Massachusetts back in 2001. By 2008, Vicanti and graduate student Haruko Obokata from a stem cell laboratory in Japan had supposedly "perfected" the technique, reproducing the results and even refining the process. Unfortunately, the process itself seems a bit too simple and unusual for some in the scientific community.

The process reportedly involves bathing mature cells in a semi-acidic solution and then culturing them in a nutrient gel that is used to help embryonic stem cells multiply. The result is lab-grown stem cells that supposedly work just like the coveted but controversial embryonic stem cells, able to create cells for any organ of the body -- a dream come true for patients on transplant waiting lists.

However, heavy criticism of the technique comes from experts in the stem-cell field who are having trouble understanding just how and why this process works. They note that Vicanti and Obokata are no experts, with Vicanti, an anesthesiologist, not even having a PhD. Something, particularly a major flaw in the cells themselves, could have been missed, making ideal results impossible and the cells useless.

Now researchers from Boston are attempting to reproduce Vicanti and Obokata's results using the same technique, called stimulus-triggered acquisition of pluripotency (STAP). It is the hope that STAP cells truly will be viable replacements for embryonic stem cells.

If they are viable, it will be a remarkable leap forward for the stem cell world, which right now cannot use embryonic stem cells because harvesting the cells requires the destruction of a human embryo.

A detailed explanation and step-by-step instructions for the STAP process was recently released by Japanese scientists. It is this process that Boston researchers will use in an attempt to recreate a STAP cell.

Vicanti plans to release a similar protocol on how to use the STAP process in the near future.

The original release of the STAP technique results was published in Nature on January 29.