The golden era of stem cell discoveries | Una Riekstiņa | TEDxRiga

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.

In her speech Una explains that adult stem cells are our body's natural resource that renews the body lifelong. Stem cell research helps to find out ways how to use stem cells to cure diseases like heart attack, diabetes, lost vision and autoimmune diseases. Adult stem cells are the medicines of tomorrow that will improve the quality of life for many people yet they are not the panacea for all diseases.

Today I'm here to tell you

about the hidden treasures of the human body

— the marvelous stem cells.

Humans are the crowning glory of the nature.

And during Renaissance times it was thought

that the arcitecture of the human body

represents the arcitecture of the Universe.

This is a picture of Vitruvian man
by Leonardo da Vinci

showing the geometry of the human body.

Renaissance period was the beginning
of the modern medicine.

The anatomy of the human body was discovered

and by the invention
of the microscope it was studied —

the body was studied at the cellular level

and it was found that the cell is

the smallest building block of the body.

And we are composed of 50 trillion cells.

Trillion is a number with twelve zeroes.

So how big would be the house of trillion zeroes?

To imagine a house of trillion building blocks.

And in fact The Great Wall of China
is built of 4 billion building blocks.

And we as human beings
are 10 thousand times more complicated

than The Great Wall of China!

And it took 2000 years to build The Great Wall of China

and perhaps you'll wonder
how long it takes to build a human being?

In an average it takes 7 to 10 minutes for mom and dad

to put two magic building blocks together,

to lay the fundament of new life.

And the rest of the body building
is done by the magic stem cells.

I was trying to imagine
what would my life look like

if I lived in Renaissance times.

Despite of the great progress in science and culture

women were not allowed to study.

So luckily for me
I live in the 21st century in Latvia,

where society is familiar with gender mainstreaming ideas and I am a researcher,

so I chose to wear a lab coat
instead of that gorgeous dress.

I came to the research lab
when I was a third year biology student

and I was fascinated
by the friendly atmosphere in the lab.

Respectable scientists were sequencing the DNA

and during the breaks
they boiled tea and smoked in the fume hood.

Wow, I thought, this could be my dream job,

so now I have 19 years of experience being a researcher

and during past 7 years
I've been studying adult stem cells.

And I'm very of excited about the stem cell potential

and I think that today we live
in the golden era of stem cell discoveries.

Every part of our body
has some capacity to renew

due to these amazing stem cells.

And I want to understand
the regeneration process that occurs naturally

to find out ways how to use stem cells to treat diseases.

How I got interested in celullar biology?

One day I saw a picture
in my high school biology book

that looked something like this.

I tried to reproduce it and it described

that cell consists of membrane and there is Golgi complex

and mitochondrion, and lysosomes

and there is nucleus — the director of the cell,

so my vivid imagination pictured a large desk
in the middle of the cell

with a strict director giving commands.

When I learned to use the microscope,

I never saw a director inside the cell,

instead I learned
that cell is a very complex structure

and nucleus is rather a hard disk

that stores genetic programms.

And cells communicate with each other by sending signals

and these signals are biological and chemical molecules.

And the signals are transmitted then to the nucleus and genetic program is starting.

So once we know the signals
to make the desired cell type

we can grow cells in a Petri dish

and then transplant into the patient and treat the disease.

Cell experiments are peformed in cell culture laboratory

which is equipped with such equipment as sterile biosafety cabinets,

incubators, microscopes and different chemicals.

And cells are grown in special plastic bottles in liquid cell culture medium.

During the experiment we add a mixture of growth factors

and then we observe changes in cell shape and protein expression.

And in this image I wish to show you one experiment

that I managed to prove
that adult stem cells are similar

to embryonic stem cells in their potential.

When I tried to publish my observation,

my paper was rejected three times,

but I didn't give up
and now this paper is published

and cited 150 times
by other stem cell scientists.

And here is a classical experiment to prove
that you work with stem cells.

So to prove that these are stem cells you have to show

that they're able to differentiate into 3 distinct cell types.

So I add 3 different mixtures of growth factors

and as a result after 3 weeks of experiment I got fat cells.

And I can say that these are fat cells,
because I can stain oil droplets in red.

And then I get bone cells
and I can say that these are bone cells,

because I see calcium deposits stained in orange.

And then the cartilage cells that I can stain blue.

Well, experiments take long time

and to get these results it took me half a year.

So I wondered what takes so long to get results in research.

And now imagine that you want to prepare

some very complicated dish, a very complicated recipe —

something like homemade mayonaisse.

So first you have to get the recipe, then the right ingredients

and then you have to the special technique how to mix it together.

And I tried twice and I failed.

Well, the same happens in experiments.

It's the mixture of right ingredients and a technique that makes it work.

And here I'm showing you skin stem cells.

It is the fluorescent microscopy image.

And I use special dyes to color cells,

so you see the director — the nucleus — stained in blue.

And the mitochondrion — the power plant of the cell —
is stained in red

and cytoskeleton that holds the cell together

and gives its shape is stained in green.

I can spend hours looking into the microscope.

Its like seeing a different world.

And I think that these cells look like jewels.

And indeed stem cells are our inner treasures.

Here is another experiment where I use the mixture of nerve growth factors

to make skin stem cells to become nerve cells.

And it took 2 years of work for my student Vadims

to establish the right procedure

and now we have a model system to find a drug

that would stimulate nerve growth after trauma.

And make a wild guess how long it will take for me to find this drug

if it took 2 years to get to this picture.

Breaking news fascinates humans nearly every day.

We hear about restored vision, about improved hearth functions

rebuilt urinary bladders, rebuilt trachea.

A lot of studies have been done in a mouse model.

By the way, during my Ph.D. studies I worked with thousands of mice.

And I really worked very hard and when I finished my Ph.D.

I thought, "That's it, no more mouse work"!

And then I got married and now I study human adult stem cells.

For thousand years humans have been dreaming to reach the stars

and yet we have come as far as to the moon.

And for thousand years people have been dreaming

to find elixir of life

and we are making first steps in undertanding

how stem cells work to regenerate the body.

And there is enough evidence now collected

that stem cells from patient or from the donor

really can cure the disease.

And there is success in clinical trials to treat such diseases

as retinal degeneration, to improve heart functions after heart attack,

to stop transplant rejection, to renew cartilage,

to heal skin lesions and to treat blood cancer,

autoimmune diseases like Crohn's disease

and immune system's deficiencies.

The road is long from stem cell research to the clinics.

There are significant safety standards that must be met to say

that the treatment will be safe for patient.

And the main safety issues for stem cells are

the potential tumorigenicity and immunogenicity risks.

So I see great similarity between Renaissance era

and a stem cell era.

Both increase understanding about the human body

with little effect of health care.

And to increase the effect on health care

more specialists are needed in biotechnology,

bioinformatics, bioengineers, health care.

Just to make the infrastructure in the field.

And university is the incubator of knowledge generation.

And I use this image — Earth at night — to illustrate

that in each of the major light spots there is a univeristy.

And in each of the university there is a cell culture lab

and a stem cell scientist working on discoveries

about stem cell use to cure diseases.

I think there's a great potential in this field.

And it takes a long time to educate a biotechnologist,

so one learns how to use advanced research equipment

and how to plan experiments and how to interpret the data.

And in coming years there will be major advancements in stem cell use

in bioimplants, drug screening and stem cells will be uploaded

with anti-cancer drugs like Trojan horses

to reach the cancer and to destroy it.

23 years ago a Nobel prize was awarded

for the discovery of bone marrow transplantation.

And that marked the beginning of the golden era of the regenerative medicine.

And I believe that stem cell based therapies will become

the golden standard of heatlh care for my children's generation.

Thank you.

(Applause)