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Speaker 1: FuGO more trik hi. A punk ie is called relala
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Speaker 2: It's the lump of gum you've been chewing for two
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty five miles of a road trip, Ali Ward.
Speaker 2: This is an episode about medical mysteries and science fiction
Speaker 2: level microscopic drama and why you should get excited about
Speaker 2: something that is hiding in the crypts of your guts.
Speaker 2: So I've known this guest for years. I've known of
Speaker 2: them for years and they have a super loyal following
Speaker 2: in the science communication field. They are also a PhD neuroscientist,
Speaker 2: their doctor of University of Toronto studying stem cells and
Speaker 2: what are they building in our brains. So this guest
Speaker 2: has been named one of Toronto Life's Top fifty most
Speaker 2: influential people, and as a person, I was so genuinely
Speaker 2: excited to meet them during this interview. Before we get
Speaker 2: to it, thank you to everyone who's submitted questions for
Speaker 2: them via Patreon dot com slash Ologies, where you can
Speaker 2: join for a dollar a month and lob questions at
Speaker 2: our guests. Thank you to everyone wearing items from ologiesmerch
Speaker 2: dot com on your body. Thanks also to everyone who
Speaker 2: rates and subscribes. It's bonkers to say, but we are
Speaker 2: the number one science podcast right now, and I started
Speaker 2: this thing in twenty seventeen with like two hundred dollars
Speaker 2: and recording voiceover in my closet into a pile of
Speaker 2: dirty laundry. So thanks for the reviews and ratings. They
Speaker 2: really keep us up there, and I read everyone such
Speaker 2: as this one left this week by the Curious Hound,
Speaker 2: who started listening four years ago, went back to school
Speaker 2: and wrote a review that said I also took the
Speaker 2: texture crush to heart and now we are married. So anyway,
Speaker 2: thanks pod Dad for encouraging us to be our most
Speaker 2: genuine selves and explore the awesome world around us. Thank
Speaker 2: you the Curious Hound. Okay, so shake out your shoulders,
Speaker 2: twist your head on straight, and let's take a deep
Speaker 2: dive into the funny little bubbles that make us who
Speaker 2: we are as we chat about stem cells, science, history,
Speaker 2: conference drama, immortality, sports, injuries, scams, ethical issues, geographical trends
Speaker 2: in medical research, rodents, spleens, your brain, multiple sclerosis, cancer therapies,
Speaker 2: face creams oprah rumors, fertility advances, and even weirdly, shipbuilding
Speaker 2: with neuroscientists, science communicator and stem cell biologist doctor Samantha
Speaker 2: Yamin aka science Sam. I feel like I have seen
Speaker 2: so many hours of your face and you're amazing.
Speaker 3: Sorry, no, you're the best.
Speaker 2: Yeah, You're someone who I recommend everyone else follows. So
Speaker 2: you may have seen her wonderful face a lot over
Speaker 2: the last three years, explaining COVID news and vaccine info
Speaker 2: into smelling myths as this newly minted PhD gain a
Speaker 2: wide audience as a relatable and to the point science communicator.
Speaker 2: And how long have you been doctor ooh?
Speaker 3: Since twenty nineteen in fact, and I had to go
Speaker 3: back and I pulled out my thesis to like review
Speaker 3: and make sure I wasn't forgetting what it is I did.
Speaker 3: Turns out I didn't forget, but just in case I did,
Speaker 3: some homework.
Speaker 2: Do you remember the title of your dissertation?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, States and fates, I think of stem cells.
Speaker 3: I haven't here. Oh no, it's a way longer than that.
Speaker 3: I tried states and fates of primitive neural stem cells
Speaker 3: in the mammalian brain. Amazing the mouthful.
Speaker 2: There's debate recently on whether or not you should have
Speaker 2: a catchy title at the front of your dissertation. I'm
Speaker 2: all in favor.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I saw that. It's another another Twitter thing
Speaker 3: where people are trying to say, like, take the pop
Speaker 3: culture references out. I turned to the first chapter of
Speaker 3: my thesis and I quoted Maya Angelou and my two
Speaker 3: favorite neuroscientists. So I think it's clear where I stand.
Speaker 2: Were you always interested in science? Were you interested in mammals?
Speaker 2: Were you interested in microscopy? What got you hooked in
Speaker 2: high school?
Speaker 3: I loved science from a young age. I loved science.
Speaker 3: I was always doing experiments around the house, but they
Speaker 3: were kind of they're really interesting experiments. I thought I
Speaker 3: invented plastic ones because I would mix all these things together,
Speaker 3: maybe a little dangerous in hindsight. I would like mix
Speaker 3: things from the kitchen and from the bathroom together my
Speaker 3: mom's perfumes, and I would like make new li q
Speaker 3: and then I would I put it in the freezer
Speaker 3: once and one time when I took it out a
Speaker 3: day later, there was a plastic film on top, and
Speaker 3: I was like, wow, I invented a new form of plastic,
Speaker 3: Like this is so good for the earth. And then
Speaker 3: I realized that the jars lid just had a plastic
Speaker 3: film that fell. So it's a good early lesson fail fast,
Speaker 3: fail hard. But I hated biology in high school. It
Speaker 3: was it was so like memorization based. I loved chemistry.
Speaker 3: And then first year university changed that real quick, and
Speaker 3: I realized biology is where my heart is.
Speaker 2: And you are a Canadian, yes, correct, so you were
Speaker 2: raised with the gift of the metric system, so you're
Speaker 2: already ten steps ahead.
Speaker 3: Honestly, it is so hard. What is fahrenheit?
Speaker 2: Why we don't even know? It's so embarrassing. But when
Speaker 2: it came down to going to grad school versus just
Speaker 2: your undergrad when did you decide to make that step
Speaker 2: into more degrees and more specialized degrees.
Speaker 3: I really wanted to do research before, definitely before I
Speaker 3: knew what research was, so I just wanted to do
Speaker 3: research because to me that was exciting. And I ended
Speaker 3: up staying in Toronto, where I did my undergrad for
Speaker 3: grad school for like logistic reasons and then also because
Speaker 3: it's a really great place for my field of study.
Speaker 3: In Canada has such a long history of stem cell
Speaker 3: research and really cool neuroscience research, and so it ended
Speaker 3: up working out. But I won't say that I was
Speaker 3: clever enough to know all that at the time.
Speaker 2: Why does Canada have such a great history of stem
Speaker 2: cell research? What's up there?
Speaker 3: We have Tillan McCullough here, who were one of the
Speaker 3: first people to there's debate, but as a Canadian, I
Speaker 3: have to say it was them. They were the first
Speaker 3: to identify properties of stem cells and then specifically in
Speaker 3: the brain. For years, people didn't think that in the
Speaker 3: adult brain there were any new cells being formed. And
Speaker 3: one of the first or the first research to show
Speaker 3: it in the mouse brain they were Canadian in Alberta,
Speaker 3: and then in the labra I ended up doing my PhD,
Speaker 3: ended up finding where in the brain those stem cells
Speaker 3: are in nineteen ninety four. And so not only does
Speaker 3: Canada have this stem cell legacy, but also the labra
Speaker 3: I got to do my PhD had this huge legacy
Speaker 3: in the field.
Speaker 2: Wow, I didn't realize that about Canada. So just a
Speaker 2: quick aside on Till and mcculluch. So these are two guys,
Speaker 2: James Edgar Till being a biophysicist from rural Saskatchewan and
Speaker 2: Ernest McCulloch, a cell biologist from Toronto, and the two
Speaker 2: of them collaborated on some experiments that involved injecting bone
Speaker 2: marrow cells into mice who had been exposed to heavy
Speaker 2: doses of radiation in part to understand the biological effects
Speaker 2: of atomic warfare. Now, a few weeks after some mice
Speaker 2: got those bone marrow injections, little spleen nodules popped up
Speaker 2: and those cells split off to make red blood cells
Speaker 2: and white blood cells or platelets, and their resulting paper,
Speaker 2: psychological demonstration of the clonal nature of spleen colonies derived
Speaker 2: from transplanted mouse marrow cells in the journal Nature. Doctor
Speaker 2: Jim Till is surviving. He's ninety one right now, and
Speaker 2: it's bonkers to think Toronto residents may have just stood
Speaker 2: next to him in line at the drug store or
Speaker 2: passed him on a walk Like living legends whose work
Speaker 2: in stem cells differentiated into all of these life saving
Speaker 2: medical fields. So if you'll have to explain to someone
Speaker 2: at like a family function or at a dinner party,
Speaker 2: like what is a stem cell, where do you even start?
Speaker 3: Stem cells are the coolest cells that there are. They
Speaker 3: get their name stem because they're the cells from which
Speaker 3: other cells stem. I'm with you. So far, we have
Speaker 3: like two key properties for stem cells. They can make
Speaker 3: other cells and they can make copies of themselves, which
Speaker 3: is really really unique for cells in the body. So
Speaker 3: they're not a mature cell type. They're an immature cell type,
Speaker 3: and other cell type stem from them. The better way
Speaker 3: of explaining it is that if you picture a family tree,
Speaker 3: stem cells are like the gramma from which everything arises.
Speaker 3: And so that's why it's cool to study stem cells
Speaker 3: because it turns out almost every tissue has a stem
Speaker 3: cell and that's where all the cells from that tissue
Speaker 3: come from.
Speaker 2: And there are different types of stem cell or is
Speaker 2: there one stem cell, and that all can kind of
Speaker 2: bloom out to different things.
Speaker 3: Part of why stem cells are hard to define is
Speaker 3: because there are many different types. You have stem cells
Speaker 3: in the early embryo that give rise to the different
Speaker 3: parts of that developing embryo. Fertilized egg itself is like
Speaker 3: the ultimate stem cell because it's something that can make
Speaker 3: any cell in the body plus the placenta, so it
Speaker 3: can make everything you need to make an embryo plus
Speaker 3: the supporting things like the placenta. So the ultimate stem
Speaker 3: cell is the fertilized egg. Then you have different stem
Speaker 3: cells early on that can make any cell in the body.
Speaker 3: They're pluri potent, plury like plural, they can make many things.
Speaker 3: And then you get, especially in adulthood, in a mature
Speaker 3: body and you and I, there are these more specialized
Speaker 3: stem cells called multipotent stem cells or tissue specific ones.
Speaker 3: So essentially, like in the brain, there are brain stem
Speaker 3: cells or neural stem cells. Those are just able to
Speaker 3: make the cells of the brain, and then you have
Speaker 3: separate ones in the blood. They only make blood, but
Speaker 3: they can make any cell in the blood, which makes
Speaker 3: them really unique. Cells. In the skin, skin stem cells,
Speaker 3: they can just make cells you need for the skin,
Speaker 3: so they're kind of confined to their tissue.
Speaker 2: So to recap pluripotent stem cells can turn into all
Speaker 2: cell types in your bod, but multipotent stem cells can
Speaker 2: become different cells only within the same lineage or tissue type.
Speaker 2: Now on either ends of those. Even more flexible than
Speaker 2: pluripotent ones are the totipotent stem cells, and those exist
Speaker 2: in embryonic tissue and they can turn into over two
Speaker 2: hundred different kinds of developing tissue. And then less flex
Speaker 2: than pluripotent and multipotent are stem cells called unipotent, like
Speaker 2: some skin stem cells that are capable of self renewal
Speaker 2: into the same type of cell. So in order it
Speaker 2: goes totopotent, pleuripotent, multipotent, and unipotent. But back in the
Speaker 2: early nineteen sixties when those spleen colonies were forming after
Speaker 2: bone marrow injections, the field had yet to know of
Speaker 2: all of this. It was just the beginning of a
Speaker 2: brand new era. And when the discovery came down, how
Speaker 2: did they know just looking from a microscope or from
Speaker 2: an experiment that these were stem cells, because before there
Speaker 2: was no knowledge of them, right.
Speaker 3: Mm hm, Well was interesting what piqued their interests. They
Speaker 3: weren't looking for stem cells, but what they found was
Speaker 3: that if you took some certain parts of cells in
Speaker 3: these nodules in a mouse, I think it was a
Speaker 3: cancer model of a mouse. They found that if you
Speaker 3: transplanted them on, they would make more colonies and more colonies,
Speaker 3: so they didn't call them stem cells at first. They
Speaker 3: called them colony forming units because they found that from
Speaker 3: one you'd get xently more cells and clumps of cells forming.
Speaker 2: And this again was our friends Till and McCulloch, and
Speaker 2: they found that these spleen colonies weren't easy to come by.
Speaker 2: Roughly ten thousand bone marrow cells yielded one nodule, but
Speaker 2: the bigger the injection, the more of these then called
Speaker 2: spleen colony nodules popped up. And of course this is
Speaker 2: interesting because typically cells just don't do this unless they're
Speaker 2: stem cells.
Speaker 3: If you just took a cell from my brain, it
Speaker 3: wouldn't really divide and it certainly wouldn't make copies of
Speaker 3: itself unless you happen to get a stem cell. Then
Speaker 3: it would start to propagate and make more and more
Speaker 3: and more.
Speaker 2: Are there places in our bodies or in any bodies
Speaker 2: that are where stem cells hang out or originate? Like
Speaker 2: do they find them in certain parts of the bone
Speaker 2: or certain parts of the brain or whatever.
Speaker 3: Absolutely there are these stem cell niches or are you
Speaker 3: a person that says niche not niche.
Speaker 2: It depends on the situation. Okay, Like if I'm around
Speaker 2: fancy people, I say niche.
Speaker 3: Oh No, on my fancy I say niche.
Speaker 2: I think I'm a stem cell.
Speaker 3: I go either way undefined. Yeah, So there are stem
Speaker 3: cell niches, and in the brain they hang out near
Speaker 3: the ventricles. These are these holes in your brain where
Speaker 3: special nutrient rich fluid flows, and so the stem cells
Speaker 3: are quite greedy. They want all those nutrients, so they
Speaker 3: hang out around there. And in the stem cells for
Speaker 3: the blood, for example, they're deep in the bone marrow
Speaker 3: because again they're usually close to where you'll have blood vessels.
Speaker 3: Because the blood is delivering all those great nutrients. They're
Speaker 3: working pretty hard. They're making a whole family of cells,
Speaker 3: so they want to have access to those nutrients. Same
Speaker 3: thing in the gut. The gut's really cool because if
Speaker 3: you look close at a gut, it has all these
Speaker 3: peaks and valleys. It's like this roughly looking structure, and
Speaker 3: the stem cells sit at the very lowest part in
Speaker 3: those valleys, the crypt and then all the other cells
Speaker 3: butt off from there and they come out like a
Speaker 3: U shape going up to that little ruffle oo.
Speaker 2: So I found a bit more about this in a
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen paper that explained constant tissue replenishment is fueled
Speaker 2: by continuously dividing stem cells that reside at the bottom
Speaker 2: of intestinal crips, and it says intestinal stem cells compete
Speaker 2: for limited niche space and therefore the ability to regain
Speaker 2: or retain stemness. And those cells that are unable to
Speaker 2: retain stemness, they differentiate into one of six different mature
Speaker 2: cell types, and then they move upwards up in the
Speaker 2: gut where they're finally shed into the intestinal lumin after
Speaker 2: three or five days. So the stem cell keeps dividing,
Speaker 2: and the ones that butt off and don't stay stem
Speaker 2: cells become intestinal cells and they do their job and
Speaker 2: then you poop them out, and then the ones that
Speaker 2: stay stem cells stay in those cryps. And if you
Speaker 2: want to read this study, be my guest. It is
Speaker 2: titled Tales from the crypt New Insights into Intestinal stem Cells.
Speaker 2: But anyway, your gut folds right now are just a
Speaker 2: hot bed of stem cell action. And do stem cells
Speaker 2: ever bite the dust without becoming something else? Are there
Speaker 2: stem cells that are like they didn't really need me,
Speaker 2: so I'm just gonna die.
Speaker 3: It's a great it's a great question. I'm laughing because
Speaker 3: it becomes a weird philosophical question. If you have a
Speaker 3: cell that's your stem cell, and it divides into two,
Speaker 3: which one was the original?
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah?
Speaker 3: And so sometimes those divisions, a stem cell can divide
Speaker 3: and make two stem cells, or it can divide, leave
Speaker 3: off with one stem cell and then another one becomes
Speaker 3: a daughter cell and goes off to be a red
Speaker 3: blood cell or whatever. So it kind of becomes hard
Speaker 3: in that sense of like, well did it ever die?
Speaker 3: Because it's still the progeny. And this is why stem
Speaker 3: cell biologists are like deep down scientists who wish they
Speaker 3: were philosophers, because we are always debating. It's like the
Speaker 3: Ship of Theseus, where you're like, at what part is
Speaker 3: it a new cell or the same cell?
Speaker 2: I mean, these are the big questions of life. I
Speaker 2: had to look this up because Ship of Theseus was
Speaker 2: just a new combination of words for me. And it's
Speaker 2: a paradox or a thought experiment that's a few thousand
Speaker 2: years old at least, and it's about a ship. And
Speaker 2: if that ship is little by little replaced with new parts,
Speaker 2: is it the same ship? And then philosopher Thomas Hobbs
Speaker 2: was also pondering this likely because they didn't have phones
Speaker 2: to scroll on, and Hobbes added that if you took
Speaker 2: all the old boards from the original ship and then
Speaker 2: you built a different ship, which is the ship And
Speaker 2: he said, the new ship retains form, but the old
Speaker 2: one retains matter. Anyway, stem cell biologists think about this stuff,
Speaker 2: and there's probably a lovely corner of TikTok where it
Speaker 2: remains hotly debated, which sounds like way better content than
Speaker 2: husbands and wives filming obviously staged pranks on each other.
Speaker 2: Get out of my algorithm with that shit. Anyway, stem cells,
Speaker 2: and do they look different? Can you look at a
Speaker 2: cell and say, oh, it's got a thicker wall, it's
Speaker 2: a stem cell, or it's purple, like how do you know?
Speaker 3: Well, there's this whole thing where when a cell divides,
Speaker 3: it's also spreading some of the cytoplasm, some of like
Speaker 3: the liquidy juice of the cell, so to speak. And
Speaker 3: so some people will look like, well, did the cell
Speaker 3: equally segregate that juice? Like does one have all the
Speaker 3: old stuff and the other daughter cell has all the
Speaker 3: new stuff. Or you make copies of DNA, does the
Speaker 3: stem cell retain the original copies or do they go
Speaker 3: have these on the new versus old strands of DNA.
Speaker 3: This is called the immortal strand hypothesis. So people try
Speaker 3: to track like what's the original cell like that? And
Speaker 3: they also try really hard to define what a stem
Speaker 3: cell looks like. And it's different for each type of
Speaker 3: stem cell throughout the body, but there are usually these
Speaker 3: key markers, ideas on the surface of the cell on
Speaker 3: the outside, it's like protein coat around its fatty lipid
Speaker 3: membrane that help us to capture stem cells when we're
Speaker 3: studying them. But it can be hard because again, when
Speaker 3: these cells that they divide into look kind of similar,
Speaker 3: where do you draw the line which one was the original?
Speaker 3: And it ends up getting really hard to purify stem
Speaker 3: cells from their most immediate progeny.
Speaker 2: And what excites you about stem cells? Do you love
Speaker 2: stem cells as a whole and they happen to be
Speaker 2: you happen to kind of course through and end up
Speaker 2: in neuronal stem cells or was there something about the
Speaker 2: brain's regeneration that really hooked you.
Speaker 3: I never planned to become a stem cell biologist. I
Speaker 3: was always fascinated in the brain and what makes us
Speaker 3: us and I started my research journey studying nerge generative diseases,
Speaker 3: and my uncle in particular, has Parkinson's, so I was
Speaker 3: really passionate about trying to understand Parkinson's disease what happens
Speaker 3: when we lose brain cells. But then I wanted something
Speaker 3: with some optimism, so I just flipped to the opposite
Speaker 3: of well, how do we make new brain cells? Because
Speaker 3: I want solutions, And that took me to this field
Speaker 3: of regeneration, and from there it just became fascinating to
Speaker 3: try to understand how does a complex structure like your
Speaker 3: brain form. We have one hundred and seventy one billion
Speaker 3: cells in your brain. That's more cells in your brain
Speaker 3: right now than seconds in like fifty four hundred years.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, right, yeah, how.
Speaker 3: Does that form? And they all look different, not all
Speaker 3: of them, but you have like hundreds of different cell types.
Speaker 3: They have these really intricate structures. They're beautiful. How do
Speaker 3: they become so different? How do they form? And so
Speaker 3: I stumbled into stem cell biology by trying to understand
Speaker 3: how does our brain form? To begin with and how
Speaker 3: might we use those same concepts to regenerate the brain
Speaker 3: when you've seen conditions where you have loss of cells.
Speaker 2: And this is a huge revelation probably for some people
Speaker 2: who learned in school that your brain is your brain.
Speaker 2: You've got dealt the cards good, No one, that is it.
Speaker 2: There is no backup reserve. That is what I was
Speaker 2: taught in school, is like, brain cannot regenerate itself. And
Speaker 2: then this discovery that like, oh shit, yes it can.
Speaker 2: How did that change neuroscience and research? Was that a
Speaker 2: huge deal? Do people talk about that like a massive event?
Speaker 3: The tricky thing is that some cells of the brain
Speaker 3: can regenerate, and there's still a ton of debate as
Speaker 3: to which cells in the human brain can regenerate, but
Speaker 3: not all of them. So I'm just going to say
Speaker 3: that with the caveat of like, you know, I used
Speaker 3: to play soccer and be really scared about heading the
Speaker 3: ball because I didn't want to lose brain cells. Maybe
Speaker 3: still be a little cautious about that. Yeah, But the
Speaker 3: discovery of stem cells in the brain was a really
Speaker 3: contentious one. In the nineteen sixties, someone named Joseph Altman.
Speaker 3: He was doing studies with radioactive molecules and found that
Speaker 3: there were new cells incorporating this radio active marker.
Speaker 2: So doctor Joseph Altman injected a radioactive form of thymidine
Speaker 2: intracranially into rodent to track new DNA formation in neurogenesis,
Speaker 2: and was surprised to see the radioactive tracer in new
Speaker 2: cells in the old factory bulb and part of the hippocampus.
Speaker 2: And he even published a study in nineteen sixty two
Speaker 2: titled are new neurons formed in the brains of adult mammals?
Speaker 2: And it ended with a question mark which kind of
Speaker 2: just hung in the air for years.
Speaker 3: And he said, you know, there must be new cells
Speaker 3: being made in the adult brain. No one believed him
Speaker 3: for decades. In the eighties, some people studying birds started
Speaker 3: to say, hey, actually, I think this could be true
Speaker 3: in birds. And it wasn't until the early nineties when
Speaker 3: people finally said, hey, you know what looks like there
Speaker 3: are some cells in the brain with like regenerative properties.
Speaker 3: Maybe Altman was right.
Speaker 2: Was he alive? I hope he was alive.
Speaker 3: He was, and that sucks he went years.
Speaker 2: I wonder what kind of day he had. If I
Speaker 2: were him, I would go nuts I would get in
Speaker 2: my bathing suit. I would run around with a bullhorn.
Speaker 2: I would get as much cold Stone creamery as I wanted.
Speaker 2: I would yell in people's face like strangers. I told you,
Speaker 2: I told you, Like, Wow, what a day. We got
Speaker 2: to check in on him, see how he's doing.
Speaker 3: Definitely a little bit of bitterness. I mean, when you've
Speaker 3: known something for years and I will say, like, this
Speaker 3: is the rare case where it's not like people didn't
Speaker 3: believe him because they're like silencing him or something. It
Speaker 3: was just it was just so out of character. It
Speaker 3: had never been seen before. There were other ways to
Speaker 3: explain his findings, and we needed a new way of
Speaker 3: corroborating this finding. And that's just how the science works.
Speaker 3: So wasn't anything against him. But it sucks.
Speaker 2: But I'm glad that he got to see it, and
Speaker 2: I'm glad that it turned out that his hunch was correct.
Speaker 2: And if you want all of the hottest gossip on
Speaker 2: this beanie baby era of stem cell research, feel free
Speaker 2: to dive into the juicy details in the book Aron
Speaker 2: CEO's Seahorse and the Search for Memory and Consciousness, which
Speaker 2: describes matters quote coming to a head at a sideience
Speaker 2: conference where one long time naysayer of neuronal stem cells
Speaker 2: kept metaphorically shitting on the evidence of other scientists into
Speaker 2: one Princeton researcher, doctor Elizabeth Gould, got deep in the
Speaker 2: stacks of a university library and found Joseph Altman's nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty two paper, which was from the year she was born,
Speaker 2: and by nineteen ninety nine, her work bringing Altman's work
Speaker 2: to the surface caused the main naysayer all these years
Speaker 2: to admit that he was wrong, and thus neuronal stem
Speaker 2: cell science finally got its due. What parts of our
Speaker 2: brain can regenerate or heal themselves?
Speaker 3: Ooh, it's so tricky to answer for humans because a
Speaker 3: human brain is really hard to study, especially at the
Speaker 3: cellular level. But there have been some very clever studies
Speaker 3: that where people who were unfortunately exposed to radioactivity we
Speaker 3: post mortem after they passed, were able to see cells
Speaker 3: that would have regenerated in their brain because of the
Speaker 3: different decay of that radioactive marker. So it's a very
Speaker 3: unfortunate reason why we got that information, but a really
Speaker 3: really clever study.
Speaker 2: When it comes to studying the human brain or the
Speaker 2: mammalian brain. You really do have to take a step
Speaker 2: back from humans and start in models of other mammals
Speaker 2: that are historically studied, like rodents and such.
Speaker 3: Right, all of my research was in mice, yes.
Speaker 2: And I had an aside in the recent Airport Neuroscience episode,
Speaker 2: but then it felt long, so I took it out.
Speaker 2: But I just want to acknowledge here that hearing about
Speaker 2: animals used in research can be really tough. And I
Speaker 2: have vegan aspirations. I've cut down a lot on the
Speaker 2: animal products I consume, but I still eat some meat.
Speaker 2: I'm definitely not perfect, and an unfortunate fact of our
Speaker 2: species is that our very existence living in houses and
Speaker 2: driving on roads and taking planes and eating agriculturally cultivated
Speaker 2: foods and even medicine impacts other species. I'm not here
Speaker 2: to answer any ethical questions because I'm still asking them myself.
Speaker 2: And actually, when I was googling that ship of theseus paradox,
Speaker 2: I stumbled across a twenty twelve movie of the same name,
Speaker 2: which was written and directed by Mumbai born and Non Gandhi.
Speaker 2: And this movie follows three patients and the ethics of
Speaker 2: transplantation and other medical treatments, and one character in it
Speaker 2: is a monk, and despite having liver disease, he maintains
Speaker 2: this staunch opposition to animal testing and thus any sorosis treatment.
Speaker 2: So that's an interesting and related movie about looking at
Speaker 2: the ethics of all this. But just like how cashew
Speaker 2: cheese gets better every coachella, stem cell research is also advancing.
Speaker 3: There's cool stem cell research making like organoid models, where
Speaker 3: you make like mini versions of tissue in a dish
Speaker 3: so that you don't have to use animals. That's not
Speaker 3: replacing animal studies anytimes, right, right, be cool, but not quite.
Speaker 2: When you're starting to look at animal models or mammalian brains.
Speaker 2: What are you thank you even looking for?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Can I tell you one of my favorite things that
Speaker 3: I never thought I would care about? But developmental biology
Speaker 3: is the coolest, and I study stem cells but because
Speaker 3: I think development is cool, And all of the hints
Speaker 3: for where regeneration can happen in the adult come from
Speaker 3: where things formed when we were developing before we're born
Speaker 3: and even lately shortly after we're born, And in fact,
Speaker 3: cells in our brain are being born into our twenties,
Speaker 3: especially those ones in the front of our brains that
Speaker 3: help with these complex decision makings that humans are really
Speaker 3: good at. Where did cells of the brain come from,
Speaker 3: Because if we started off as just one cell, one
Speaker 3: fertilized egg, how do you eventually become the trillions in
Speaker 3: your body? At one point there must have been one
Speaker 3: cell or some area of cells that go on to
Speaker 3: make a brain. And if you study that and kind
Speaker 3: of follow what those cells looked like early on and
Speaker 3: even where they were, that can help you get clues
Speaker 3: for where cells with similar properties that can regenerate and
Speaker 3: make things right. If you want to know how to
Speaker 3: rebuild your house, you should probably know what the foundation
Speaker 3: of the house looked like, how it was built in
Speaker 3: the first place. Same thing in the body. You look
Speaker 3: at how a tissue was built before birth, then you
Speaker 3: learn how you could maybe rebuild it. You learn what
Speaker 3: the cells with that potential look like, and so we
Speaker 3: start in all of stem cell biology. Even if you're
Speaker 3: studying adult stem cells in fully mature tissue, it's really
Speaker 3: helpful to go back to development and learn the basics.
Speaker 3: And from doing that we learned a lot about what
Speaker 3: stem cells in the adult brain start to look like
Speaker 3: and get those key markers to help us purify them
Speaker 3: and identify them in a tissue with fancy antibodies and
Speaker 3: proteins that glow.
Speaker 2: And what about your PhD work specifically, can you tell
Speaker 2: us a little bit about what your research and your
Speaker 2: findings were.
Speaker 3: I started off looking at cells in the adult rodent brain,
Speaker 3: so we were trying to study what do they do.
Speaker 3: In fact, we found there are different populations of stem
Speaker 3: cells in the adult brain, and one in particular that
Speaker 3: we were excited about was what we called a primitive
Speaker 3: neural stem cell. It's this very quiet stem cell. I
Speaker 3: call it the ultimate Grandma stem cell because it really
Speaker 3: doesn't do much. It barely divides, it's just chillin. Most
Speaker 3: studies have missed it, so it's not one that was
Speaker 3: popularly studied. It's very rare. But when there was some
Speaker 3: kind of trauma or injury to the brain, including you
Speaker 3: could do models of stroke, for example in mice, then
Speaker 3: we found it would start to become really active and
Speaker 3: start dividing. So it's kind of like a grandma who's
Speaker 3: chillin on a rocking chair. She's like, I've done so
Speaker 3: much already, time to rest and hang out. But something
Speaker 3: goes wrong in the family and she's up and she's
Speaker 3: doing everything. So I called it the Grandma cell with
Speaker 3: a lot of reverence and respect kick ass, and I
Speaker 3: started studying these cells at really early stages of brain
Speaker 3: development and trying to understand just what the family tree
Speaker 3: looks like at those early stages, especially at this age
Speaker 3: where you're switching from making lots of one type of
Speaker 3: brain cell called neurons. These are the ones that send
Speaker 3: the electrochemical messages that help us do all the things
Speaker 3: we do. You're switching from making lots of those to
Speaker 3: making lots of another type of cell called astrocytes, these
Speaker 3: beautiful star shaped cells that kind of support and buffer
Speaker 3: and do all sorts of things they don't get credit
Speaker 3: for in the brain. What do the stem cells look
Speaker 3: like and.
Speaker 2: What kinds of diseases are being looked at in terms
Speaker 2: of stem cell therapy. Perhaps one day.
Speaker 3: Stem cells have a lot of hope because they can
Speaker 3: make new cells. So any disease where cells have been
Speaker 3: lost and that's leading to the disease, or even diseases
Speaker 3: like cancers where you have cells that are acting out
Speaker 3: and acting in a way that isn't helpful for the body,
Speaker 3: that you could think of replacing those bad actors with
Speaker 3: stem cells and just replace them so you don't have them.
Speaker 3: With that said, there are very few diseases where stem
Speaker 3: cells are an active therapy. Things related to the blood.
Speaker 3: Immune or blood diseases are the most routine types of therapies,
Speaker 3: so different leukemias, even multiple sclerosis. In certain cases, stem
Speaker 3: cell therapies via a bone marrow transplant can be helpful,
Speaker 3: but it's very intense and it's not a first line
Speaker 3: of therapy because a bone marrow transplant is not chill
Speaker 3: by any means.
Speaker 2: And if that's from a donor, does that mean you
Speaker 2: also have to be on immuno suppressants.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, which can make it really really tricky because
Speaker 3: now you have to deal with being on immunosuppressants and
Speaker 3: you have to make sure the cells don't get rejected.
Speaker 3: And it's definitely not a first line of treatment, but
Speaker 3: because the blood is so accessible, it's the easiest and
Speaker 3: it's been the one that we've been doing for the longest.
Speaker 3: There are other cases where you're doing a skin graft,
Speaker 3: for example, or different corneal surgeries where you're rafting new
Speaker 3: mini sheets of cells, and those are using stem cells,
Speaker 3: but not in their pure form, and those are really
Speaker 3: the main ones.
Speaker 2: And the results do vary per study. There was one
Speaker 2: meta analysis that came out in twenty twenty two titled
Speaker 2: clinical translation of stem cell Therapy for Spinal cord injury
Speaker 2: still premature results from a single arm meta analysis based
Speaker 2: on sixty two clinical trials, and this study poured through
Speaker 2: dozens of studies and found that the results demonstrated that
Speaker 2: the efficacy of stem cell therapy is encouraging, but the
Speaker 2: subsequent adverse effects, including neuropathy, pain, and muscle spasms, remain concerning.
Speaker 2: And now my mom has MS, and there are some
Speaker 2: therapies for people who have relapsing remitting MS, but my
Speaker 2: mom has progressive MS, which is a different type. And
Speaker 2: a few months ago, an Italian study titled Neural stem
Speaker 2: cell Transplantation in Patients with Progressive multiple Sclerosis and open
Speaker 2: label Phase one study revealed that twelve patients with progressive
Speaker 2: MS treated with spinal cord transplanted human fetal neural precursor
Speaker 2: cells tolerated the treatment well and had less brain tissue
Speaker 2: atrophy and more neuroprotective molecules proportional to the amount of
Speaker 2: cells received. So that's one field of research my family
Speaker 2: is keeping an eye on.
Speaker 3: Oh, speaking of the eye as well, the eye is
Speaker 3: really interesting because it's contained in itself and you have two,
Speaker 3: not that you'd want to lose one, but for people
Speaker 3: who are really looking to regain any amount of vision
Speaker 3: that they can, and where even a ten percent improvement
Speaker 3: could make a huge difference for quality of life, that's
Speaker 3: a really attractive and easier place to do studies. So
Speaker 3: there are lots of studies in the eye that are
Speaker 3: pretty cool.
Speaker 2: And I'm sure there must be labs figuring out how
Speaker 2: do we take a cheek swab and make you a
Speaker 2: batch of your own stem cells that you won't reject?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Is that just like a sci fi novel? Or is
Speaker 2: that closer?
Speaker 3: That is only recently possible because of a discovery in
Speaker 3: two thousand and six, And it is wild to me
Speaker 3: that in two thousand and six a whole new field
Speaker 3: of stem cell biology was started, and I believe they
Speaker 3: won the Nobel Prize for it in twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: It's true. John B. Gerden and Shinya Yamanaka won the
Speaker 2: twenty twelve Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the
Speaker 2: discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent.
Speaker 3: So I had already told you stem cells or stem cells,
Speaker 3: there are different ones throughout the body, and a brain
Speaker 3: stem cell can only make brain cells, and I was
Speaker 3: pretty firm about that. Well, it turns out that these
Speaker 3: people found that you could take a mature skin cell,
Speaker 3: a mature skin cell that on its own would do
Speaker 3: nothing but be skin. You could take a mature skin cell,
Speaker 3: and with just four special factors called reprogramming factors, you
Speaker 3: could reprogram it to not be a skin cell, but
Speaker 3: kind of go back in developmental time and become what
Speaker 3: we call an induced pluripotent stem cell.
Speaker 2: Let's rewind and try again.
Speaker 3: So it's going from mature skin cell only skin, reverting
Speaker 3: back undoing its own development, and now it can make
Speaker 3: any cell in the body. What boom?
Speaker 2: Yeah, in.
Speaker 3: Two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: So now what are folks doing with that?
Speaker 3: A whole new branch of science was started. The cool
Speaker 3: thing about they're called IPS cells for short.
Speaker 2: That stands for induced pluripotent stem cells. Who boy, howdy
Speaker 2: they are cool.
Speaker 3: They're really really interesting because they let you do exactly
Speaker 3: what you said of taking cells from let's say someone
Speaker 3: with a brain disease. Their brain cells are not easily accessible.
Speaker 3: You can't easily extract cells to study them in a dish,
Speaker 3: or to grow them up to then transplant them back.
Speaker 3: That's not an experiment you can do. However, if you
Speaker 3: could take their skin cells, which should have the same
Speaker 3: genetic changes that the cells in their brain have, grow
Speaker 3: them into IPS cells, then turn them into brain in
Speaker 3: a dish, maybe you could put those back in or
Speaker 3: maybe one of the most common use cases isn't just
Speaker 3: for cell replacement like I just described, but it's for
Speaker 3: studying those hard to access cells. Now you could have
Speaker 3: these patient specific models of hard to reach cells in
Speaker 3: the body in a dish, which is really wild.
Speaker 2: It was so wild, so easily taking skin cells, reprogramming
Speaker 2: them into egg and sperm precursors, into motor neurons, blood cells,
Speaker 2: liver cells in a dish. So some folks with conditions
Speaker 2: like ALS or Duchen's muscular dystrophy are donating skin cells
Speaker 2: to researchers to see if the cells can be reprogrammed.
Speaker 2: It's a ways off, but it's promising. It's giving me
Speaker 2: some sort of peace of mind. But what about things
Speaker 2: like I got a sports injury and I had a
Speaker 2: stem cell injection in my shoulder. Does that work? Is
Speaker 2: that flim flam? What's the deal?
Speaker 3: I've told you a lot about the hope of stem cells,
Speaker 3: but beware because there's lots of hype and most things
Speaker 3: like that where you're hearing about stem cell injections for
Speaker 3: a sports injury or for anything really besides an intense
Speaker 3: kind of blood condition or maybe a skin or eye
Speaker 3: type of graft. Basically, anything being advertised direct to consumer
Speaker 3: like that for pain is very likely a scam. There's
Speaker 3: this thing called stem cell tourism and lots of direct
Speaker 3: to consumer marketing of stem cell products, and I will
Speaker 3: say that unfortunately most of them are not legitimate, and
Speaker 3: they are operating under legal loopholes. And in fact, the
Speaker 3: US is the country with the majority of these types
Speaker 3: of fraudulent stem cell clinics that are frankly quite dangerous.
Speaker 3: You might say, like, well, why not try if there
Speaker 3: are no other options? I get it, I have chronic
Speaker 3: back pain. I'm there with you, but it can be
Speaker 3: very dangerous to do something that hasn't been approved.
Speaker 2: PS for anyone with chronic pain. We do have an
Speaker 2: episode on that called dolerology. Where are those stem cells
Speaker 2: coming from?
Speaker 3: Oh, that is the question, because it's it could be anywhere.
Speaker 3: Sometimes they're stem cells from other animals like pigs. Sometimes
Speaker 3: they'll say that it's coming from your own body. But
Speaker 3: I've spoken with people who've underwent them, and just from
Speaker 3: hearing what they went through, I'm like, I don't think
Speaker 3: that they actually got stem cells. And there might be
Speaker 3: like a short term Oh yeah, I felt better for
Speaker 3: some period of time. It could be placebo. It could
Speaker 3: also just be like the inflammation induced from that type
Speaker 3: of procedure can have a slight improvement effect, but it's
Speaker 3: short lived, and it's certainly not a stem cell therapy.
Speaker 3: And because they're operating under legal loopholes, you don't really
Speaker 3: know what they're injecting into you, and it can be
Speaker 3: quite dangerous also very expensive, and so just a red
Speaker 3: flag for folks listening if someone's saying you'll be participating
Speaker 3: in a clinical trial, because that's what they often do.
Speaker 3: They say it's experimental, and folks will message me and
Speaker 3: be like, yeah, yeah, it's experimental. I know it's like new,
Speaker 3: but I'm excited to be a part of research, and
Speaker 3: I love that they're excited to be part of it.
Speaker 3: But if they're making you pay, it's probably not a
Speaker 3: real clinical trial because typically those legitimate ones are funded
Speaker 3: and you'll have a clear indication of risks like a
Speaker 3: real clinical trial. They're almost convincing you not to participate
Speaker 3: because they are over explaining all risks because they want consent,
Speaker 3: which is a good thing.
Speaker 2: Right, but it's hard to tell. Some sketch places will
Speaker 2: even post to clinicaltrials dot gov because that site doesn't
Speaker 2: always vet or double check who's posting trials, so definitely
Speaker 2: do your homework. And not long ago, their Federal Trade
Speaker 2: Commission and the Georgia Attorney General's Office sued the founders
Speaker 2: of a company that was ambiguously called the stem Cell
Speaker 2: Institute of America because they were targeting seniors and promising
Speaker 2: all this relief from arthritis and joint pain with stem
Speaker 2: cell and j aections costing five grand apiece. And in
Speaker 2: a recent ruling, the stem Cell Clinic was ordered to
Speaker 2: pay three hundred thousand dollars in damages, which does sound
Speaker 2: like a victory, but they took in over six million
Speaker 2: before they were sued, and we have a twenty twenty
Speaker 2: one Genicular Traumatology episode about knee problems, and in it,
Speaker 2: the guest doctor Stone talked about recruiting the body's own
Speaker 2: stem cells to an injury using cytokines. So listen to
Speaker 2: that one if you're curious about your pesky, high maintenance joints. Now,
Speaker 2: what about let's say my parents had taken my umbilical
Speaker 2: cord and thrown it in a medical grade freezer. Let's
Speaker 2: say that I had a chunk of my own baby cells.
Speaker 2: Is how is that used? How is embryonic and placential
Speaker 2: types of stem cells used? So the first successful umbilical
Speaker 2: cord blood transplant happened in nineteen eighty eight, and then
Speaker 2: the first public cord blood bank opened in New York
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one. So, younger millennials, maybe your cord
Speaker 2: got tossed on ice like a necklace of leftover sausages.
Speaker 2: But gen Z, you're of the age when this was possible.
Speaker 2: Gen X, I'm sorry. Born in an era when diet
Speaker 2: pepsi counted as water and switching to camel lights was
Speaker 2: a prenatal wind. Are you preggers? You can add cord
Speaker 2: banking to your birthing to do list, along with getting
Speaker 2: your whole nursery together and not tearing your buttthole asunder.
Speaker 3: Mbellical cord banking is I think a really cool and
Speaker 3: exciting option. However, from my friends in the blood stem
Speaker 3: cell field, there aren't enough blood stem cells in the
Speaker 3: umbellical cord for an adult body, and blood stem cells
Speaker 3: are really hard to culture and expand outside of the body.
Speaker 3: The top indication where you'd want to bank it for
Speaker 3: your own use is if you have a known family
Speaker 3: history of blood conditions that might start really early in life.
Speaker 3: So if you have that in your family history, I
Speaker 3: mean I certainly talk to your doctor. Don't just take
Speaker 3: my advice on that. Talk to your doctor and they
Speaker 3: might advise you, yes, you should bank it and keep
Speaker 3: it for your own child, because in their early life
Speaker 3: they may need this and it would be enough to
Speaker 3: help them. But for most people it's not enough, and
Speaker 3: so it's really great to still keep the umbellical cord
Speaker 3: but put it into the public system, and then through
Speaker 3: that public system it can help research, it can help
Speaker 3: other people who are waiting, and umbelical cord stem cells
Speaker 3: are really cool because they're less immunologically mature, so they're
Speaker 3: better donors for lots of people. So all that to say,
Speaker 3: if you are giving birth soon, please talk to your
Speaker 3: birthing team about banking your umbelical cord and if it
Speaker 3: makes sense for your family, putting it into the public
Speaker 3: system is always really really cool.
Speaker 2: Part of a buy nothing group. Offer up your highly
Speaker 2: vascularized meat tube taking up space on your abdomen. I
Speaker 2: got an umbilical cord.
Speaker 3: I'm not used anymore. Look, if you're doing all that
Speaker 3: and given birth, you do what you need to do.
Speaker 2: What you need to do.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: You know this is interesting too, because I feel like
Speaker 2: anyone who was kind of aware of the emergence of
Speaker 2: this field, especially in America. Different administrations have been more
Speaker 2: pro stem cell research, and others have taken a little
Speaker 2: bit more of a conservative approach. But when it comes
Speaker 2: to research on embryonic stem cells and folks who might
Speaker 2: have embryos that they don't plan on, you know, carrying
Speaker 2: to term and stuff, where does embryonic research come into
Speaker 2: all this?
Speaker 3: Mm hmmm. Another reason why Canada is such a leader
Speaker 3: in stuff too. I didn't want to say that at
Speaker 3: the time. Okay, that makes sense, Yes, that makes it.
Speaker 3: I don't want to start with that, but anyways, Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's this tendency when people hear stem cell research to
Speaker 3: think of all this controversy that I remember when I
Speaker 3: was growing up. The good news is is that a
Speaker 3: lot of embryonic stem cell research doesn't rely on donor
Speaker 3: samples from terminated pregnancies. There are some embryonic stem cell
Speaker 3: lines that were made from terminated pregnancies years ago, and
Speaker 3: so it's not continue donation needed, it's we have those
Speaker 3: immortalized lines and we can use them and study them
Speaker 3: from that same original donation. And then there are also
Speaker 3: there's also this induced plury potent stem cell research, which
Speaker 3: can be made from adult cells and then you revert
Speaker 3: them back. We can use other model organisms as well,
Speaker 3: and then a really neat thing. You'll find a lot
Speaker 3: of stem cell biologists who partner with different hospitals, and
Speaker 3: let's say you're having a tumor biop seed or some
Speaker 3: sample biop seed for whatever medical reason, then that tissue
Speaker 3: from an adult can be used as well. My friends
Speaker 3: who've recently given birth, they haven't been asked about donating
Speaker 3: cord blood or anything like it. It is often something
Speaker 3: you have to bring up. Ye, it definitely can be helpful,
Speaker 3: but the majority of stem cell research doesn't require that,
Speaker 3: and there are lots of ways around it if it's
Speaker 3: not available. And then as adults too, you can donate
Speaker 3: stem cells for research from the bone marrow, which can
Speaker 3: be intense but incredibly life saving and great for research.
Speaker 3: And then even there are some skin biopsy procedures and
Speaker 3: other biopsy procedures that are minimally invasive that can help
Speaker 3: a lot with research. So if folks want a credible
Speaker 3: source to learn more, you can go on the website
Speaker 3: closer look at stem cells dot org. That's a reputable
Speaker 3: source from the International Society for stem Cell Research, and
Speaker 3: they explain all about participating in stem cell research by
Speaker 3: donating cells because they'll just make more of themselves. So
Speaker 3: it's all good plenty.
Speaker 2: Can I ask you questions from patrons? Yeah, of course,
Speaker 2: but before we do, let's distribute some good via donations
Speaker 2: in honor of our guests. So the first donation is
Speaker 2: going to a closer look at stem cells dot org,
Speaker 2: run by the International Society for stem Cell Research, which
Speaker 2: fosters solid scientific info about stem cells and encourages research.
Speaker 2: And since this is an episode about things splitting off.
Speaker 2: We'll do another donation of Sam's choice, which is the
Speaker 2: Marsha P. Johnson Institute, which protects and defends the human
Speaker 2: rights of black transgender people by organizing, advocating, creating an
Speaker 2: intentional community to heal, and promoting their collective power. Because
Speaker 2: Sam says black trans lives matter, drag is not a
Speaker 2: crime and Marsha pay No Mind. Johnson is forever an icon.
Speaker 2: So you'll find links to both causes in the show notes.
Speaker 2: And those donations were made possible by sponsors of ologies.
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Speaker 2: Okay, let's have your brains ask my brain to ask
Speaker 2: Sam's brain questions. I thought k Pelis Casayas, Chandler, Wutherington,
Speaker 2: Paul Bruno, and url shol Peleg had a great question,
Speaker 2: how do they know what to do? How do these
Speaker 2: cells know what they're doing?
Speaker 3: That's great? How do any of us know what we're doing?
Speaker 3: Is a great question. This is where the stem cell
Speaker 3: niche is. The home of the stem cell is very
Speaker 3: important because it can often send signals. And that's a
Speaker 3: bit again philosophical, because if a stem cell leaves its niche,
Speaker 3: it might be missing the signals to even stay a
Speaker 3: stem cell. But the simple way is that there are
Speaker 3: often external cues. But it's a huge question in the
Speaker 3: field to know what those key factors are. And this
Speaker 3: discovery of induced pluripotent stem cells has helped us do
Speaker 3: a lot of that research in a dish because now
Speaker 3: by watching whatever signaling happens in the body, we can
Speaker 3: start to see, okay, what was actually needed to become
Speaker 3: a neuron versus a muscle cell, and you start adding
Speaker 3: it in the dish and seeing, okay, well, when I
Speaker 3: add a lot of this thing, I get more muscle.
Speaker 3: So now we know that that's important.
Speaker 2: So the external cues from the location of the stem
Speaker 2: cell can influence what type of cell it becomes. Like,
Speaker 2: let's say you're a great answer, but your moves are
Speaker 2: going to vary depending on if you're sober at your
Speaker 2: aunt's second wedding or dizzy from a flask of pop
Speaker 2: off at a disco. Jacqueline Church had a good question
Speaker 2: about the news of like a rare disease cured by
Speaker 2: stem cell therapy. Oftentimes accompanies how much it costs, like
Speaker 2: millions of dollars, but wanted to know what makes stem
Speaker 2: cell therapy so expensive.
Speaker 3: It is a major limiting thing in the field. Just
Speaker 3: how expensive the research itself is. A lot of that
Speaker 3: has to do with our bodies develop over nine ten
Speaker 3: months and then they continue developing and growing over the
Speaker 3: span of our early lives. Trying to do that in
Speaker 3: a dish is expensive because you're adding in all these
Speaker 3: factors that are body naturally produces, and you're purifying them,
Speaker 3: and you're testing everything, and so that process of making
Speaker 3: the cells in a dish is a large part of
Speaker 3: the cost. And if you're also trying to make them
Speaker 3: patients specific in some way, which generally we don't because
Speaker 3: it's not sustainable. But if I did want to make
Speaker 3: an alley Ward stem cell. Oh, hello, right, and it's
Speaker 3: all tailored to you. That would make it even more expensive.
Speaker 3: It can take over a month and even a few
Speaker 3: months just to go from a stem cell to a
Speaker 3: mature human cell in a dish, and all through that
Speaker 3: you're adding all these expensive things that are biomedical grade,
Speaker 3: not to mention all the people who have to watch
Speaker 3: over them, like every two days you have to go
Speaker 3: and adjust the conditions of the cells. So that's a big,
Speaker 3: big part of the cost.
Speaker 2: So if you've heard the term atologous stem cell transplant,
Speaker 2: that means a patient's own stem cells are extracted from
Speaker 2: the blood. And I tried to find the just the
Speaker 2: cost on these what are we talking and kind of
Speaker 2: like a handbag that I never want to own. The
Speaker 2: prices were high and also dicey, So I found articles
Speaker 2: saying anywhere between ten thousand to eight hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: And insurance will sometimes cover proven therapies, like for blood cancer,
Speaker 2: but if a stem cell transplant is deemed experimental for
Speaker 2: your condition, you better start gofund me yesterday. Now, what
Speaker 2: does a stem cell transplant even involve? You asked, so
Speaker 2: patrons Olivia Anderson Kaiju Samolier, Matty s Kaisis Sword, a
Speaker 2: survivor of non Hodgkin's lymphoma, and Kate Tim's, Andy Jewett
Speaker 2: and Heather m whose pop also has my loma, and
Speaker 2: Emily Stuffer and a bunch of other people asked about
Speaker 2: stem cell transplants, and Emily wrote, as part of my
Speaker 2: dad's cancer treatment mantle cell lymphoma, they were looking into
Speaker 2: a stem cell transplant and basically they're going to use
Speaker 2: it on stem cells and wanted to know how does
Speaker 2: this work and why does it work? What does that
Speaker 2: involve exactly?
Speaker 3: Now, typically the stem cell therapies and stem cell transplants
Speaker 3: that are routinely used are those related to blood conditions,
Speaker 3: so blood cancers or immune conditions, because immune is all
Speaker 3: about the blood as well. So that would typically entail
Speaker 3: refreshing the stem cells you have. And again we're focused
Speaker 3: on the blood here because those are the ones that
Speaker 3: are used in clinics today. So it might involve some
Speaker 3: amount of chemotherapy to kill off all of your current
Speaker 3: or many of your current blood cells and to try
Speaker 3: to deplete the stem cells as much as possible, and
Speaker 3: then a transplant of new maybe donor blood stem cells
Speaker 3: that can repopulate your blood with cells that don't have
Speaker 3: whatever mutation or issue you're experiencing. And something being tested
Speaker 3: is that we could take someone's own cells and correct
Speaker 3: whatever mutation there might be that's causing the disease and
Speaker 3: then put them back in. But it's really tricky, and
Speaker 3: the reason you can only do it in blood is
Speaker 3: because you can get blood out, but you can't just
Speaker 3: take out a whole solid tissue and replace all this.
Speaker 3: It's much much harder to do. So that's why it's
Speaker 3: very limited in which diseases stem cell transplants can actually
Speaker 3: work for. And I encourage folks to look at closer,
Speaker 3: look at stem cells dot org to learn more and
Speaker 3: to learn what types of questions to ask to make
Speaker 3: sure that it's the type of therapy or transplant that
Speaker 3: will be more helpful than harmful.
Speaker 2: And some folks asked about nerve damage justice left in
Speaker 2: Crystal Wilson. Jerry Hoffmeister asked about nerve damage or neuropathy
Speaker 2: and stem cells. Crystal Wilson says, I got stem cells
Speaker 2: injected into my ankle after nerve damage. How am I healed?
Speaker 3: When it comes to peripheral nerves it's just like the edges,
Speaker 3: the very very edges of the nerves can sometimes regenerate,
Speaker 3: and in those cases you might not need stem cells.
Speaker 3: You might just need to know what factors can stimulate
Speaker 3: that regeneration, or that it might not be possible. There
Speaker 3: might be a limited window of time, So even things
Speaker 3: like exercise could potentially stimulate and maybe doing it under
Speaker 3: the supervision of a physiotherapist who's not going to push
Speaker 3: things too hard, of course, But so there are things
Speaker 3: like that where that could be what's helping, because your
Speaker 3: exercise could be inducing some kind of signals to happen
Speaker 3: to that in that area that could help maybe with
Speaker 3: some level of regeneration. I'm not saying that's exactly what
Speaker 3: happened in this person's case. One of the things people
Speaker 3: have studied is does exercise stimulate stem cells? Maybe, but
Speaker 3: I think in this case it's probably that there's some
Speaker 3: inflammation and maybe whatever happened in that person's case was
Speaker 3: stimulating some sort of nerve regeneration and it was more
Speaker 3: about the signals rather than new cells in that case.
Speaker 3: When it comes to joint conditions, I would say there
Speaker 3: are no known stem cell based therapies and so it'd
Speaker 3: be really great to have a chat with your doctor,
Speaker 3: find a good physio who can give some advice, because
Speaker 3: there are other really cool approaches. Stem cells are great,
Speaker 3: but not for everything.
Speaker 2: Right and again, in the Chunicular Traumatology episode about bad knees,
Speaker 2: we chatted about how my brand new husband jareded shredded
Speaker 2: his ACL in a jiu jitsu accident and had to
Speaker 2: get ACL surgery and he was in physical therapy right away.
Speaker 2: I want to say the day after surgery. Now, did
Speaker 2: that promote stem cells? Because his knees doing great now?
Speaker 2: So I look this up and I found a twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two study called Molecular Mechanisms of Exercise Contributing to
Speaker 2: Tissue Regeneration in the journal Nature, And sure enough it's
Speaker 2: this whole study is just like a kind hearted scientist
Speaker 2: bending down into your face and whispering through a bullhorn
Speaker 2: to get your ass to the gym or to the trails,
Speaker 2: or your water aerobics or arm lifts or literally anything
Speaker 2: you can do to keep moving. Because physical activity, according
Speaker 2: to the study, enhances hippocampal neurogenesis. It can improve sensory
Speaker 2: and motor functions after spinal cord injury. It can promote
Speaker 2: the survival of transplanet stem cells, can help relieve the
Speaker 2: pain of neuropathy in peripheral nerves, and promote stem cells
Speaker 2: in the blood. It can regulate stem cells in your bone.
Speaker 2: It's just really good for you. So if you can move, move,
Speaker 2: dance in the living room, garden, walk to the magazine,
Speaker 2: stand on the corner, read some trashy mags, watch kettlebell
Speaker 2: YouTube videos. I don't know, move some logs around the yard.
Speaker 2: Your future self is thanking you for all the extra
Speaker 2: stem cells and years. What about aging? Linus stout first
Speaker 2: time question asker, and isabel wanted to know. In Lina's words, Okay,
Speaker 2: I've heard that rich people freezer stem cells to make
Speaker 2: them young again. Does that work? Can you reset yourself
Speaker 2: like a computer? And Isabelle wanted to know is it
Speaker 2: possible to use telomerase to reverse aging and extend a
Speaker 2: person's lifespan? What's going on with like a fountain of
Speaker 2: youth full of stem cells.
Speaker 3: Love this question because it reminds me during my PhD
Speaker 3: when we would have these long debates of what is aging?
Speaker 3: Can you define aging? Like? What is it on a
Speaker 3: cellular level? We don't really know, and it's a very
Speaker 3: hard thing to define, which blows my mind because we
Speaker 3: all know what it is, but to define it biologically
Speaker 3: no clue. Anyway. There have been some kind of gnarly
Speaker 3: experiments for then. I won't explain them in detail, but
Speaker 3: basically where you got youthful blood flowing into an older
Speaker 3: age animal and it did seem that there was some
Speaker 3: reversal of some signs of aging.
Speaker 2: Freeze my young blood.
Speaker 3: What I do that ever? No, And again, the interesting
Speaker 3: thing about stem cells is sure they're very cool in
Speaker 3: a dish when we study them, or in the body
Speaker 3: when they're there from development and they're happy and they're
Speaker 3: in their home. A really tricky thing going into the
Speaker 3: future is how do you get stem cells to where
Speaker 3: they need to be? How do you deliver them and
Speaker 3: have them survive that delivery because cells don't really like
Speaker 3: to be pushed through a needle in an injection, So
Speaker 3: there's all sorts of engineers trying to find ways to
Speaker 3: deliver stem cells and fancy gels so that they're happy
Speaker 3: and survive. So delivery survival is super hard, and then
Speaker 3: the next part is integrating how do you get them
Speaker 3: to actually do the thing they need to do. If
Speaker 3: you look at the back of your TV or computer,
Speaker 3: you have wires everywhere. If you just throw more wires,
Speaker 3: it wouldn't solve your tech issues. Need to be in
Speaker 3: the right spot. So how do you get the stem
Speaker 3: cell to do the right thing. So we're not at
Speaker 3: the stage where we know how to take a young
Speaker 3: stem cell or a stem cell that you bank when
Speaker 3: you're like fifteen, and get it to reverse aging. It
Speaker 3: is a goal for some people, but how that can
Speaker 3: be done is tricky, and I think banking stem cells
Speaker 3: towards research is probably a much more effective thing to do.
Speaker 2: You mentioned a gel and a lot of folks Don Ewald,
Speaker 2: Jules Rilla, Chris Grace, Robischow, and Catherine Lapinski wanted to
Speaker 2: know in Jewels words, do the over the counter stem
Speaker 2: cell facial serums and creams actually work. Chris Brewer says,
Speaker 2: what's up with Oprah's face cream? I heard there's human
Speaker 2: foreskin in it which contains stem cells. Lena Statt was
Speaker 2: horrified by that as well. Anny, is there room to
Speaker 2: bust some flin flam?
Speaker 3: Thinking, oh absolutely, I am a skincarew girly. I have
Speaker 3: like a ten step routine and I cycle, and I'm
Speaker 3: all about the skincare. So I got you. I will
Speaker 3: tell you I have many I have a rotating wheel
Speaker 3: of skincare products, and not one mentioned stem cells. So
Speaker 3: I don't spend my money on that. Stem cells are
Speaker 3: so hard to grow, Like, how could you get them
Speaker 3: to survive in a dish? First of all? What would
Speaker 3: putting them on your face even do? I don't know
Speaker 3: that any of these are trying to suggest that there
Speaker 3: are stem cells in the cream, but I don't get, like,
Speaker 3: what does that mean? Like I guess with Oprah's there
Speaker 3: are maybe foreskin cells. I doubt it. I'm assuming there
Speaker 3: are like things that the foreskin would secrete because foreskin's
Speaker 3: usually youthful skin. That's the logic. It's like, if it's
Speaker 3: from a circumcision that happened near birth, it's youthful skin.
Speaker 3: So is youthful skin secreting things that will make our
Speaker 3: skin youthful too? Maybe? But I would just rather put
Speaker 3: retinal on my personally.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, okay, so rest in peace. My Google search
Speaker 2: history again, because this was a deep dive into some
Speaker 2: medical caverns I did not need to visit. But I'm
Speaker 2: going to give you the briefest of lowdowns so yes.
Speaker 2: In twenty thirteen, Oprah Winfrey was in the hot seat
Speaker 2: for recommending this cosmetic cream called skin Medica, and not
Speaker 2: simply because it costs two hundred and fifty bucks an ounce,
Speaker 2: but because folks got wind that skin Medica founder, a
Speaker 2: San Diego based dermatologist named doctor Richard Fitzpatrick, had used
Speaker 2: human fibroblasts, which help with wound healing and collagen production,
Speaker 2: in his signature cream. Now. His previous forays into this
Speaker 2: science involved working with a company called Advanced Tissue Sciences,
Speaker 2: which was trying to grow human skin for diabetic patients
Speaker 2: and people recovering from burns. Now, at the time of
Speaker 2: the Oprah controversy, doctor Fitzpatrick kind of poop pooed it,
Speaker 2: and he explained all those fiber blasts were from one foreskin.
Speaker 2: It was obtained decades before. Also, he passed away about
Speaker 2: a year after all of this controversy, and I tried
Speaker 2: to figure out via his very sweet obituary if maybe
Speaker 2: maybe the foreskin was his son's, but the timing didn't
Speaker 2: match up, So I went back back back into some
Speaker 2: dusty libraries decades old studies and found that the foreskins
Speaker 2: in question number one, I found a study that mentioned
Speaker 2: foreskins plural, I don't know, but they were quote obtained
Speaker 2: through routine infant circumcision. So kind of sounds like cooking
Speaker 2: up a soup with stuff that was going to go
Speaker 2: in the compost bin. But I really thought I would
Speaker 2: be busting face cream, foreskin flim flam. But here I am.
Speaker 2: I'm just here to converm it. It's true, but with
Speaker 2: the caveat that it was just supposedly one very productive
Speaker 2: foreskin that someone was going to throw away anyway, and
Speaker 2: the parents donated it. Again ethics, I highly doubt they
Speaker 2: asked the baby, But I looked for literal hours to
Speaker 2: try and track down who that baby might be, because one,
Speaker 2: I wonder if they know that they are on Oprah's
Speaker 2: face kind of And two does there now adult dick
Speaker 2: get any royalties? I mean, I get are like residuals
Speaker 2: from the cream.
Speaker 1: Face she knows.
Speaker 2: She knows also times change, and I don't know if
Speaker 2: Oprah still uses that cream. But her longtime makeup artist,
Speaker 2: Derek Rutlitch has launched a line called Aura Glos Serum
Speaker 2: and it's full of plant based ingredients, and it's said
Speaker 2: to impart a lit from within radiance. And it should
Speaker 2: also be noted that Derek sixty two years of age
Speaker 2: appears to be immortal. I would have guessed thirty one tops.
Speaker 2: So it's foreskin derived fibroblasts versus tannicles.
Speaker 3: And then there are others creams that say plant stem cells,
Speaker 3: which makes me laugh really hard because I'm like, do
Speaker 3: you mean from the stem?
Speaker 2: I don't know, Well, yeah, do do only mammals? Do
Speaker 2: only chordates? Like who has stem cells? I should have
Speaker 2: asked this way earlier, But oh, do plants have stem cells?
Speaker 3: Plants have stem cells. They behave a little differently, but
Speaker 3: they do have stem cells. But then they also have
Speaker 3: like a stem. So I'm always like, are those creams
Speaker 3: referring to like they're just from the stem cells? I
Speaker 3: don't know. I don't I think that we could learn
Speaker 3: from stem cells how to make cool skincare and how
Speaker 3: skin regenerates. We can certainly learn that from stem cells,
Speaker 3: but I don't think I need any kind of stem
Speaker 3: cell in my cream.
Speaker 2: Plant stem cells? Can you imagine from the stem? And
Speaker 2: they're like, show me the lie. Also, if you'd like
Speaker 2: to hear about people putting weird stuff on their face,
Speaker 2: I hit up the Malachoology episode about slugs and snails
Speaker 2: for some snail facial facts. And also the Glycobiology episode
Speaker 2: has great info on why hyaluronic acid is not ripoff.
Speaker 2: You'll be like, Oh, this is legit. It's molecules. A
Speaker 2: lot of folks Catherine Claymoremon, Chris Whitman, Michael Wilbur, Tar Harrison,
Speaker 2: and first time question asker and potential future stem cell
Speaker 2: researcher Alena wanted to know, in Catherine's words, how far
Speaker 2: away from stem cell based organ transplants.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a fabulous question. I'm gonna pause here to
Speaker 3: say organs are like a step ahead. We're getting good
Speaker 3: at making tissues in a dish, well, making miniaturized tissues
Speaker 3: that are really really small, like the size of a
Speaker 3: grain of rice. We can make like small bits of tissue.
Speaker 3: But if you look at like your arm, for example,
Speaker 3: and the muscles there, then there's bone as well as
Speaker 3: blood and muscle cells and skin around it. Organs are
Speaker 3: complicated because they have many different tissues combined and coming
Speaker 3: together in a certain way. So you have to figure
Speaker 3: out the stem cells to make each of those tissues
Speaker 3: and then how to make them come together in three D,
Speaker 3: and people are doing that. Don't get me wrong. Three
Speaker 3: D printing has helped build scaffolds around which we can
Speaker 3: build mult tissue many organoids they're called, and people are
Speaker 3: working on that. But I think what will happen sooner
Speaker 3: is that we can grow and it is happening now
Speaker 3: this research where you can grow human organs from human
Speaker 3: stem cells in other animals like pigs, for example, and
Speaker 3: then that's easier because it has all the other physiology
Speaker 3: and is probably way cheaper than doing it all in
Speaker 3: a dish.
Speaker 2: So this field is not new. It's called zeno transplantation.
Speaker 2: And a twenty twenty two New York Times article described
Speaker 2: a huge leap in transplant medicine as a kidney grown
Speaker 2: via pig was externally attached to a patient who is
Speaker 2: on life support, with the patient's families consent, and the
Speaker 2: kidney worked almost immediately, to the thrill of the surgeons.
Speaker 2: And it came from a genetically altered pig who lacked
Speaker 2: the gene that would trigger a really severe human immune
Speaker 2: rejection response, and the surgeons while they were at it,
Speaker 2: also slipped a pig thiamus in the patient to trick
Speaker 2: the human body into accepting the organ that was grown
Speaker 2: from a pig. Now, this might be great news for
Speaker 2: the one hundred thousand people in America right now waiting
Speaker 2: for organ donations twelve die each day waiting and for
Speaker 2: more on kidney donations. Yeah, we have an episode on it,
Speaker 2: the Nephrology episode. Will link it in the show notes.
Speaker 2: But maybe not so happy all of those pigs or
Speaker 2: animal activists. But the medical teams were quick to note
Speaker 2: in the article that one hundred million pigs die a
Speaker 2: year for our tacos and our breakfasts. But yes, emerging
Speaker 2: science possibilities and ethical considerations abound.
Speaker 3: Or you could like start it and then have the
Speaker 3: body finish it. But making a whole organ is super hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as is making a whole baby. And we had
Speaker 2: some questions. Devin McPeek, tj McKenna, Joe Portfino, and Jeddine
Speaker 2: Lennon want to know in Devon's words, Devin mcpeak's words,
Speaker 2: oh this is my shit. Where are we on turning
Speaker 2: sperm producing people's stem cells into eggs and or turning
Speaker 2: egg producing people's stem cells into sperm, so same sex
Speaker 2: couples can have biological babies together or with like changing
Speaker 2: the way that we do IVF, stem cells potentially be
Speaker 2: a replacement for an egg.
Speaker 3: Yes, I love this question, and there have been so
Speaker 3: many advancements in recent years, and I'm forgetting what the
Speaker 3: checklist looks like, but there is a lot of research
Speaker 3: underway to use stem cells to help make gam meats,
Speaker 3: and stem cell research is actually core to IVF because again,
Speaker 3: the fertilized eggs the ultimate stem cell, and so the
Speaker 3: gam meat's coming together make the ultimate stem cell, so
Speaker 3: they kind of go hand in hand.
Speaker 2: For more on this, you can see the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: paper titled generation of Artificial gammeat and embryo from stem
Speaker 2: cells in Reproductive Medicine, which looks at different potential options
Speaker 2: of using primordial germ cells which can come from adult
Speaker 2: stem cells, from male and female gonads, and from pluripotent
Speaker 2: stem cells which include embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent
Speaker 2: stem cells. And now you know what all that shit means.
Speaker 2: I didn't know at the beginning of this episode either,
Speaker 2: but now we get it. Okay. Cool.
Speaker 3: In twenty twelve when the Nobel Prize was given for
Speaker 3: induced pluripotent stem cells. The other person who won, John Gurdon,
Speaker 3: was the person who first did somatic cell nuclear transfer,
Speaker 3: which is essentially the research that's the backbone for doing
Speaker 3: this type of work.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, And that's how.
Speaker 3: Like Dolly the sheep was cloned, really right, because you
Speaker 3: could take the genetic material and put it in an, oh, say,
Speaker 3: an egg cell, and then go from there. So all
Speaker 3: of these fields are super related, and I love that
Speaker 3: people were making those connections.
Speaker 2: You know, one day your great grandkids are just going
Speaker 2: to teleport a cheek swab and then a few weeks
Speaker 2: later they'll get beamed back an instapod baby and they
Speaker 2: will have no crotch ruptures. And I am happy for them.
Speaker 2: I'm thrilled for them. Also, patrons Jillian Claire and Sabrina
Speaker 2: wanted to know cann of fetus's stem cells take a
Speaker 2: body safari outside of the womb or if it's a
Speaker 2: flim flam, that fetuses can send their stem cells to
Speaker 2: help their parent heal if they get an injury during pregnancy,
Speaker 2: and folks, this is true. Kind of this is called
Speaker 2: feto maternal micro chimerism, and apparently these cells can be
Speaker 2: found in the mom or the host parent for decades
Speaker 2: after birth, and they've been found around tumor lesions, leading
Speaker 2: researchers to think that they are therapeutic or protective. But
Speaker 2: then toward the end of one study, the twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: paper called Novel Insights into the Link between Fetal cell
Speaker 2: Mitochimerism and Maternal cancers, they do acknowledge that quote fetal
Speaker 2: cells showing certain phenotypes could have roles in tumor evolution
Speaker 2: and progression, meaning that maybe those fetal cells are the
Speaker 2: ones causing the problems, which is like, wow, fuck you,
Speaker 2: what what I grew you? Which is just another reason
Speaker 2: to send here mom a mother's stake card. We had
Speaker 2: a lot of questions about ethics, and Kyle Utten had
Speaker 2: a great question, how scared should I be about stem
Speaker 2: cell research and eugenics along the lines of designer babies,
Speaker 2: things like that, I know that you've mentioned that stem
Speaker 2: cell researchers are also philosophers. Is there a forum where
Speaker 2: these things are discussed? Are these discussed at every conference
Speaker 2: that comes up? Is their best practices?
Speaker 3: The stem cell community talks a lot about ethics, and
Speaker 3: it's part of what made me want to go into
Speaker 3: science communication after my research because we were always I
Speaker 3: just loved those sessions and we were really lucky to
Speaker 3: have them at both our local and international conferences. I
Speaker 3: actually wish we talked even more about it, because I
Speaker 3: think there are so many different ways that stem cell
Speaker 3: research touches ethics. But I will say a lot of
Speaker 3: researchers have been leaders in policy moves too slow for science,
Speaker 3: So stem cell researchers have been calling for moratory on
Speaker 3: certain types of research. When it comes to cloning. There
Speaker 3: was the whole case with the gene edited babies that
Speaker 3: happened because there's no international policy on stem cell research,
Speaker 3: so it's governed by different countries.
Speaker 2: So just FYI, the world's first genetically edited babies or
Speaker 2: twin we're also born in twenty eighteen who were tweaked
Speaker 2: as embryos to potentially resist future infection with HIV. And
Speaker 2: we talked about genetic alterations and eugenics with the wonderful
Speaker 2: doctor Emily Akerman, a systems biologist and a disability advocate,
Speaker 2: and she said during that episode, I don't want to
Speaker 2: be genetically modified, and I wouldn't want children to be
Speaker 2: genetically modified. So I do wish that people would be
Speaker 2: much more cognizant of the ableism and the eugenics that
Speaker 2: are so deeply ingrained in good science, and said that,
Speaker 2: it's been really interesting to see the way that non
Speaker 2: disabled people have framed the conversation about disability and genetics
Speaker 2: in a scientific way. And I'll link on my website
Speaker 2: some good resources to read on that from different voices,
Speaker 2: and I'll also link doctor Ackerman's episode in the show notes.
Speaker 3: And the research community tries to lead with what the
Speaker 3: standards are, but there are cases where researchers have kind
Speaker 3: of gone off. I don't know how worried I am
Speaker 3: about it. I'm always worried when policy moves too slow,
Speaker 3: and this field of research is kind of slow too,
Speaker 3: so maybe that's on our side. The ethical things I
Speaker 3: think about are incidental findings in stem cell research, because
Speaker 3: you're donating cells, so I always think about that. I
Speaker 3: think about the fourteen day rule, which is a big topic,
Speaker 3: so like, how long can we grow humans embryonic stem
Speaker 3: cells in a dish before it starts to get concerning?
Speaker 2: Okay, so the fourteen day rule. Side note, it's kind
Speaker 2: of like the five second rule, but it involves embryos,
Speaker 2: and it's a law in some countries and an ethical
Speaker 2: standard in others, And essentially it's like, let's not grow
Speaker 2: that past fourteen days and experiment now. I looked at
Speaker 2: the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and they had a
Speaker 2: section on their website about myths and misconceptions. And I
Speaker 2: did not know this. But so people who donate leftover
Speaker 2: embryos for research go through this extensive consent process to
Speaker 2: make sure they understand embryonic stem cell research. And they
Speaker 2: say that under state, national, and international regulations, no human
Speaker 2: embryonic stem cell lines can be created without explicit consent
Speaker 2: from the donor, and that these embryos are from IVF
Speaker 2: clinics they were already destined to be destroyed, so embryos
Speaker 2: can't be made with the intent to destroy them for research.
Speaker 2: But if you paid for an embryo to be made
Speaker 2: and it's sitting on ice because you're not going to
Speaker 2: grow it into a baby, you have the right to
Speaker 2: destroy it or donate it. Them's the rules, at least
Speaker 2: in some places.
Speaker 3: So that's something that researchers talk about ownership of cell
Speaker 3: lines if you donate your cells to research. And then
Speaker 3: folks like to think about cloning as well, which is
Speaker 3: a fun one. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I've always wondered, like, indulge me here, but there's gotta
Speaker 2: be cloned people on Earth, right.
Speaker 3: There's gotta be.
Speaker 2: There's gotta be.
Speaker 3: I will say that in theory we know how to
Speaker 3: do it, and in practice, yeah, I think I know
Speaker 3: how to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't done it. Would there be any way
Speaker 2: to tell that a person is a clone other than
Speaker 2: just a database of being like, hm, duplicate, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. Would they have like shorter telomers
Speaker 3: for their age?
Speaker 2: This is a great debate, and I love that you
Speaker 2: take your science to the public, which you've educated so
Speaker 2: many people, especially over the pandemic. You always have great
Speaker 2: information that is super factual and very rigorously checked and
Speaker 2: very trustworthy. Thank you, and a lot of people are
Speaker 2: just giant fans of you. Moses Cabrera, Addie mcbatty, Elizabeth
Speaker 2: and first time question asker Chloe kirk All want to
Speaker 2: know a little bit about how you work in science communication,
Speaker 2: if you have any advice on getting into the field.
Speaker 2: Or finding your niche did it.
Speaker 3: Thank you, that's so sweet, and thank you for those questions.
Speaker 3: I was excited. I started incidentally doing science communication because
Speaker 3: I was seeing direct to consumer marketing of stem cell
Speaker 3: procedures that I was concerned about, and I saw a
Speaker 3: lot of it happening on social media, and so I
Speaker 3: created an Instagram account. I didn't have one. I started
Speaker 3: it for that exact purpose, and to show people what
Speaker 3: it looks like to do stem cell research, how much
Speaker 3: more research needs to be done, what goes into a fact.
Speaker 3: So I started it out of my passion for science,
Speaker 3: and then realized I really loved it, and so I
Speaker 3: purceed it for that. And so I think my advice
Speaker 3: is like, get into it if you love it, and
Speaker 3: for those reasons. And I think bring the rigor that
Speaker 3: you would bring to science and scientific research to your
Speaker 3: science communication. So I think again, overthinking ethics is always good.
Speaker 2: Overthinking ethics is always good. That's a great consider. Amazing Bumpers,
Speaker 2: Please make a pin, Please make rich What about the
Speaker 2: hardest thing about stem cell research or what you do?
Speaker 2: What is the most annoying. It can be petty or
Speaker 2: it can be giant.
Speaker 3: When I was doing my PhD. The most annoying thing
Speaker 3: was how long experiments took. It was a week to
Speaker 3: grow the stem cells, a week to differentiate them, and
Speaker 3: then another week to get them ready to be imaged
Speaker 3: and analyzed. So all experiments were at least three weeks,
Speaker 3: if not longer. So that was annoying. And I would
Speaker 3: say now things still take a long time. Even a
Speaker 3: simple like thirty second video can take a really long
Speaker 3: time to take.
Speaker 2: What about your favorite thing about what you do, or
Speaker 2: about cell biology or stem cells or science comunic.
Speaker 3: Keeper, I will say I am forever inspired by our biology.
Speaker 3: I am obsessed with cells. I think they're so cool,
Speaker 3: and I love space and I love the cosmos. I
Speaker 3: think they're super cool. But I also think we have
Speaker 3: a whole universe in our bodies that we haven't explored.
Speaker 3: And it really inspires me because we look in the
Speaker 3: mirror and we're told to see certain things and critique
Speaker 3: ourselves and think all these horrible things. And I feel
Speaker 3: that very much. But at the same time I try
Speaker 3: to remember, like, it's just amazing that I'm alive today.
Speaker 3: I got out of bed, or I didn't and I
Speaker 3: stayed in bed. That's also like a fantastic feat of
Speaker 3: so many cells in our bodies. And even when things
Speaker 3: are not ideal and we wish our bodies were operating differently,
Speaker 3: it still inspires me how all of this stuff's happening
Speaker 3: inside of us without us knowing. And I think it's
Speaker 3: the coolest story there is. It's these little cells living
Speaker 3: out their own lives inside of us. Is that creepy, No,
Speaker 3: not at all.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: Even if you're doing nothing, there's trillions of parts of
Speaker 2: you doing a lot at the moment. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And there's so much we don't know about it.
Speaker 3: It's it's like in our own body and we don't
Speaker 3: fully know what's happening. And we're alive at a time
Speaker 3: when we have technology that's helping us, like to see
Speaker 3: cells moving in action in ways we never have before,
Speaker 3: to understand our genome in ways we never have before.
Speaker 3: So we're just in a really exciting time for biology
Speaker 3: and understanding the microscopic. The hill I die on is
Speaker 3: that people will love cells the way I do. That
Speaker 3: is my thing, Like I'm just I love cells. I
Speaker 3: want to talk about them constantly.
Speaker 2: So ask scientific Sam's not smart questions because even the
Speaker 2: simplest of cells can be boggling when you get up close.
Speaker 2: And thank you so much to doctor science Sam aka
Speaker 2: Samantha you mean and look up science Sam on all
Speaker 2: the social platforms. Her handles are also very easily linked
Speaker 2: in the show notes, as is her website, which is
Speaker 2: just her name Samantha you mean dot com and she
Speaker 2: is wonderful. Love her. We are at ologies on Twitter
Speaker 2: and Instagram. I'm Ali Ward with one L on both
Speaker 2: you can say hello. Also just joined Blue Sky. Do
Speaker 2: I know how to post on there? Not at all,
Speaker 2: but I'm on there. I had to get the handles.
Speaker 2: Thank you doctor Sarah McNulty for giving me her reference codes.
Speaker 2: Thank you Susan Hale for handling merchant ologies merch dot
Speaker 2: com and so much more. Aaron Talbert admins the Ologies
Speaker 2: podcast Facebook group. Noel Dilware schedules interviews and does so
Speaker 2: much more. Emily White of the Wordery makes professional transcripts.
Speaker 2: Smologies are kid friendly episodes that have been whittled down
Speaker 2: to smaller links with no swears, and you can find
Speaker 2: them at Aliward dot com, slash smologies or linked in
Speaker 2: the show notes. Thank you, Zeke Rodriguez, Thomas and Mercedes
Speaker 2: Maitland for working on those. Kelly Dwyer does our website
Speaker 2: and can do yours. Assistant editing was done by the
Speaker 2: genetically flawless Jarrett Sleeper, and lead editing is by the
Speaker 2: tody potent Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn wrote
Speaker 2: the theme music. And if you stick around to the
Speaker 2: end of the episode, I tell you a secret. And
Speaker 2: this week it's that our friend Bonnie Dutch sent Jarrett
Speaker 2: a plant when he popped his acl It was nearly
Speaker 2: two years ago and it's still alive. I see it
Speaker 2: every day and I'm like, why doesn't everyone send house
Speaker 2: plants instead of flowers? This thing has lasted like seven
Speaker 2: hundred days, longer than a bouquet, and I water it
Speaker 2: only when it looks like it might sue me if
Speaker 2: I don't. Okay, cut banks, textra crush before you turn
Speaker 2: into a mushrooms lunch like all of us. Okay, Bye bye, hacadermatology, homeology, ryptozoology, lithology, technology,
Speaker 2: meteorology and pactology, ethology, ceiology, selenology, steroids, stem cells, impossible,
Speaker 2: burger