Science Spotlight: Stem Cell Lecture

This year’s class of ’88 lecture series speaker Hugh Taylor addressed the question, “Will Stem Cells Stop the Biologic Clock?” The Yale School of Medicine physician-scientist and editor-in-chief of the Reproductive Sciences journal interspersed the story of his stem cell biology research with the hopeful prediction that stem cells could revolutionize our treatment of disease and biological aging.

Stem cells are the liberal arts student equivalent of cell types: they haven’t yet decided what cell form to take. As blank slates, they are capable of dividing and differentiating into almost any cell type in the body. As many diseases are caused by cell decay and death, these undifferentiated cells are promising to scientists in their potential to regenerate tissues and restore normal function.

The most infamous stem cells are embryonic stem cells, which are extracted from days-old embryos. But adult stem cell reservoirs are also found naturally in the body and replenish tissues as they lose their cells due to trauma or decay.

Hugh Taylor’s research revolves around endometrial stem cells, or stem cells found in the lining of the uterus. Taylor was first inspired to begin work with stem cells after seeing many patients struggle with infertility. Stem cell therapy struck him as a bright possibility.

“Infertility is a huge problem. By age 45, most women are unable to have children,” Taylor said. “That’s the concept that we’re born with most of the eggs we’re going to have and we start to lose them. But the ability of us to identify stem cells could help us stop this biological clock and extend the reproductive lifespan – if we could do this, it could have tremendous implications for society.”

Taylor also works on using endometrial stem cells to treat diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, a neuromuscular degenerative disorder, and Type I diabetes. Although other scientists have done research with embryonic and other adult stem cell types, Taylor finds endometrial stem cells promising because of their accessibility and abundance.

“Some of these cells are shed in menstrual flow,” Taylor said. “Someone could collect their menses and store them as a source of stem cells. Not as great a yield as a biopsy, but much easier. And we’ve been able to sort cells using certain markers, and we can pull out from menstrual debris and use them to create other cell types.”

Taylor placed endometrial stem cells into cultures of insulin secreting cells, allowed them to differentiate in response to their environment and then injected them into mice unable to produce their own insulin. To his surprise, the mice gained better control over their blood glucose levels.

“Not only did the cells make insulin, but they made insulin in a glucose-responsive fashion, just like we wanted,” Taylor said.

Taylor also discovered that endometrial stem cells could be reprogrammed to differentiate into nerve cells when in a culture with other cells. By injecting reprogrammed endometrial stem cells into mice, he found that they localized to the brain and increased dopamine levels. Dopamine-producing cells die in Parkinson’s disease, but Taylor hopes that stem cells could be used in the future to mitigate its symptoms.

As stem cell therapy is still in its early stages, it has not yet led to any direct medical applications – but Taylor’s work represents an important step on the path to future clinical treatments. His findings highlight the astounding and accelerating world of regenerative medicine, and embodies one of futurist and science writer Arthur C. Clarke’s famous laws: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Indeed, it is truly incredible to contemplate that the key to regenerating failing tissues and healing the body could lie in the budding field of stem cell biology.