"Genetically modified" children: the truth at first hand
Remote control for longevity
Olga Malakhova, "Kazakhstanskaya Pravda"photo by Yuri Becker
Shukhrat Mitalipov, a scientist from the USA of Kazakh origin, is one of the ten most successful and famous scientists in the world. At a recent meeting at the Kazakh National Medical University named after S. Asfendiyarov, a professor at the University of Oregon spoke about his discoveries in the field of cloning for the treatment of genetic diseases.
Not cloning, but reprogrammingKnown in the scientific world for being the first to clone primates, our countryman was born and grew up in the village of Avat, Almaty region.
His father, who attended the meeting at the university, jokingly told the students: "My son did not like to carry water for watering cucumbers, so he tried to study as best as possible." And I wished them the same perseverance and thirst for science.
After successfully graduating from school, Shukhrat entered the Timiryazev Agricultural Academy in Moscow, where he seriously engaged in science. Then there was a postgraduate study at the Medical and Genetic Research Center of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, a doctoral dissertation at the Institute of Human Genetics of the same center of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the Russian Federation. In 1995, he moved to the United States to continue working with stem cells. Now he is a professor at the Oregon National Research Center of the USA and the first in history to whom the US Clinical Trials Committee issued a license for experiments with human eggs and embryos in 2010. In December 2012, a group of scientists led by Mitalipov cloned the first lines of such cells.
The main goal of the research is to stop the aging process, prevent the development of hereditary diseases, and make a person's life healthier and longer, the professor emphasizes. He compares rumors and fabrications that in the future cloning of people will be put on stream to prepare organs from them for transplantation, with the plots of Hollywood films.
– Treatment with our methods consists in reprogramming at the cellular level. We take a single skin cell, make a stem cell out of it, it will develop in the body, fighting ailments. Now we are making tissue cells. We don't need to grow a person to make organs out of him. We hope to grow organs in an incubator from a cell in the future. That's what they can be used to save a person," the scientist says.
Local media suggested that the scientist was invited to Kazakhstan to clone the snow leopard and other endangered species.
"I don't do animal cloning," the professor replied. – Yes, in the USA they clone horses, dogs, cats. My colleagues and I clone primates for medical purposes – to treat people. This is not so much cloning as nuclear transplantation. The work is being carried out under the supervision of US government agencies, they require that all this be tested on animals many times before it begins to be used on humans.
These works were started with animals: the scientist and his team developed a technique for transplanting a chromosomal complex in primate eggs. Thanks to this method, the macaques Mito and Traker were born in 2009. And it is this technique that makes it possible to prevent the transmission of hereditary diseases to children from their parents.
Aging can be managedMitalipov told how it was possible to obtain stem cells from a cloned human embryo.
His team used for cloning the same technique with which scientists managed to clone Dolly the sheep in 1996. The scientist extracted DNA from a donor egg obtained from a young woman, placed genetic information from a skin cell in it and forced the cell to divide. The division was carried out not by stimulating electrical discharges, as in the case of Dolly the sheep cells, but with the help of caffeine.
The resulting embryo successfully developed for 5-6 days and reached a size of 120 cells, after which Shukhrat Mitalipov managed to extract living stem cells from it. They begin the development of any multicellular organism, they can turn into cells of various organs and tissues. And this is what opens up broad prospects for the treatment of diseases, including multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease.
Mitalipov's scientific group studies mitochondrial genes, there are 37 of them, and they are very susceptible to mutations. The professor says that his group managed to make many lines of embryonic stem cells and show that there really are mutations. The egg keeps the mitochondrial DNA intact, and it is these cells that have been cured of these mutations.
– I hope that not in the very distant future we will give everyone a remote control when it will be possible to manage their development, you can shift the processes forward or backward, or put on pause, – continues Shukhrat Mitalipov. – Our fundamental research suggests that it is possible to control cell aging, and we have already shown this in our work.
Yes, this is quackery!Of course, there are still a lot of ethical questions, because very often progressive achievements are used for low purposes.
The professor noted that he conducts research on primates, but in the USA there are very large restrictions from the state, what can be done, what cannot be done, there are some species of humanoid primates that are actually very close to us, they were banned from working with them a year ago, gradually trying to ban all experiments on primates in general. However, progressive ideas have often been resisted in the history of science. But it is impossible without this if we want to bring these methods of treatment to a person, he believes.
There are a lot of untested, unproven methods with stem cells in the world, the professor stressed, mostly this is quackery. Clinics, medical centers, taking advantage of the patient's need, mainly in developing countries offer "modern" treatment, due to this medical tourism is developing, but, as a rule, all this brings harm instead of benefit.
– I work with embryonic stem cells. We have learned to isolate them, at this stage of development the embryo does not need a placenta, we can isolate or fertilize this egg and develop this embryo for a week in incubators.
Mitalipov's laboratory is working on mitochondrial genes. The frequency of mutations in them is as follows: 1 out of 200 children born will inherit mutations in mitochondrial genes, it is estimated that every 30 minutes a child is born who may develop the disease. By doing nuclear transplantation, scientists have developed a technology and have already shown that they can help families have their own children, minus these 37 genes that carry hereditary diseases. Of course, a donor will be used, but 99.9% of all genes will be from parents.
For the first time in the history of mankindThe group's scientists were allowed to transplant embryos to patients, and this was done last year.
– Volunteers gave us their eggs, healthy women gave us their eggs, then we got stem cells, which now do not have these mutations, side effects, genetic abnormalities, and if we were allowed to transplant these embryos, the child would have appeared healthy.
Now we are working with government agencies to give them permission to conduct clinical trials, transplantation. It is believed that this is one of the first works in the history of mankind, when they do not just select an embryo that does not have mutations, but actually create a healthy embryo by treating or replacing a mutation.
– We are criticized for making genetically modified children, – says Dr. Mitalipov. – We think there is nothing terrible in this, people after transplantation operations go with someone's heart or with someone's kidneys, why is it possible, but not here. The yellow press has already called our technology "a child with three parents", although we prove that only a small piece of genes is taken from a female donor.
The scientist understands that even more work will be left to future generations of scientists, young doctors. He inspected the university's gene laboratory and noticed that it has all the conditions to conduct research and make grand discoveries. Joint projects with Kazakhstani students and scientists are also possible.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru28.02.2014