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Regenerative Pathologies: Stem Cells, Teratomas and Theories of Cancer

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Medicine Studies

Abstract

What is now familiarly referred to as the ‘embryonic stem (ES) cell’ is a recent biological category whose origins lie in research into benign and malignant teratomas carried out in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. In these studies, the question of the normal or pathological character of the ES cell was a matter of considerable debate and indeed the term ES cell was often used interchangeably with that of the embryonal carcinoma (EC) cell. This article argues that the indecisiveness of the entity known as the ES cell—its refusal to commit to established demarcations between the normal and the pathological—continues to haunt the field of stem cell science. Exploring the prehistory of research into ES cells, early theories of cancer (in particular the embryonal theory expounded by Julius Cohnheim) and recent theoretical critiques of the somatic mutation theory, the article not only points to a shift in understandings of the normal and the pathological but asks under what conditions such shifts are able to take place.

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Notes

  1. This is not to say that teratocarcinoma research is the only thread in the complex history of contemporary stem cell research. See Brown et al. [8] for a fascinating and detailed history of research into hematopoetic stem cells, the first stem cells to be successfully used in therapeutic treatments. See also Edwards [16] who claims that ES cells belong to the history of human in-vitro fertilization and chimaera research dating from the sixties. A pioneer in IVF research, R. G. Edwards was speculating about the therapeutic potential of ES cells from as early as 1982. For detailed scientific reviews outlining the history of teratocarcinoma research I am following here, see Andrews [3], Damjanov [14] and Papaioannou [28].

  2. As pointed out by Barry Peirce [5, p. 224], the germ cell theory of teratoma genesis is indebted to Askanazy [4].

  3. See the articles of Brinster [7], Papaioannou et al. [29] and Mintz and Illmensee [25]. In these experiments, EC cells derived from tumours were transplanted into blastocysts and then reimplanted into the uterus of female mice. The EC cells appeared to participate in the normal process of embryonic development.

  4. Although it must be said that the question is beginning to be asked more pointedly as adult and embryonic stem cell therapies move into clinical trial. The possibility of teratoma-formation and the uncertainties of ES cell behaviour are of particular concern for regulators attempting to define standard product specifications for these novel, and extremely lively, biologicals.

  5. See for example the latest edition of Alberts et al. Molecular Biology of the Cell (Alberts et al. [2, pp. 1217–1219]) for a representative exposition of the “stem cell theory of cancer.”

  6. See Barry Peirce and Speers [6] for a much longer consideration of the therapeutic possibilities suggested by teratocarcinoma research.

  7. For a detailed history of the oncogene theory of cancer, see Fujimura [18].

  8. See also [34, pp. 25–26, 106–107] for Soto and Sonnenschein’s critique of cell culture methods.

  9. In Life as Surplus [13, pp. 103–128], I have explored the influence of morphogenetic fields and topological theories of transformation in contemporary tissue engineering, with a particular emphasis on the work of René Thom.

  10. See for example Sun et al. [36, 37]. And for biomathematical models of cancer in particular, see Chaplain et al. [11] and Sitharama [32].

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  1. University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Melinda Cooper

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Cooper, M. Regenerative Pathologies: Stem Cells, Teratomas and Theories of Cancer. Medicine Studies 1, 55–66 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12376-008-0002-4

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