Professor David F. Albertini This is Me

Education

 View all 92 references Web References

1. 1. www.grc.org

   www.grc.org/programs.aspx?year - [Cached]

   Published on: 1/10/2008   Last Visited: 3/2/2008

   David Albertini (University of Kansas Medical Center)

2. 2. USNews.com: Health & Medicine

   www.usnews.com/usnews/health/a - [Cached]

   Published on: 9/23/2006   Last Visited: 9/23/2006

   "It's a far cry from restoring fertility," says ovarian biologist David Albertini at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

3. 3. The Missouri Coalition for Lifesaving Cures - Newsroom

   www.missouricures.org/news_021 - [Cached]

   Published on: 2/19/2005   Last Visited: 11/5/2006

   Dr. David Albertini, a professor of molecular medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center, said skin grafts are a good example of how an adult stem cells work. If a person sustains a burn, skin from another area of the body can be placed over the damaged area to help the body heal. The body doesn't reject the transferred skin because it has the same genetic makeup as the rest of the body.
   
   Adult stem cell researchers are studying why some tissues, like skin, are able to regenerate, and others, like heart and brain tissue, cannot. According to Albertini, scientists in the adult stem cell research field are trying to take a stem cell, or regenerating cell, from the liver, and twist its fate to produce a brain cell.
   
   "Many people hope we can take an adult stem cell and make it serve an infinite number of healing capabilities," Albertini said.
   
   Albertini said adult stem cell researchers have not yet been able to take a human skin cell and make it produce a brain cell. He said there have been some animal studies, but that the adult stem cell research field was still in the formative and early stages of study. He said there are many people claiming that adult stem cell research has developed numerous cures.
   
   "I have found that those claims have not been substantiated by research," Albertini said.
   ...
   "Unlike adult stem cells, they do not seem to be programmed yet and they seem to be able to produce many types of cells," Albertini said.
   ...
   According to Albertini, scientists doing somatic cell nuclear transfer would take a donated unfertilized egg and remove its genetic material. This means the egg is no longer a normal egg. Scientists then take the genetic material from another type of cell, like a heart or brain cell, and insert it into the egg.
   
   "It really becomes a hybridized cell at this point," Albertini said.
   
   Then, Albertini said, scientists use a special technique that makes the egg "think" it was fertilized, so it begins to divide.
   ...
   Albertini agrees that SCNT is the way that Dolly the sheep was created.
   
   "Sometimes the reconstructed egg begins a process that looks a lot like early egg development after fertilization," Albertini said. "Occasionally that structure will proceed along with its development and give rise to a pregnancy and an offspring if inserted into a womb."
   
   Albertini said that 11 species of mammals have given birth to an offspring via SCNT. But the animals are not healthy.
   
   "Because of the health of the animal that has been produced by SCNT," Albertini said, "the notion of reproductive cloning is simply unacceptable in a human."