Sponsored by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (MD) and Rep. Ron Paul (TX), H.R. 1654 proposes tax credits for the storage, research use, and collection of specified stem cells. The section specifying qualified stem cells was carefully worded to exclude embryonic stem cells and fetal tissue. For instance, it proposes that the cost of collection and private storage of umbilical cord blood could be met with a tax credit of up to $2000. Let’s all contact the Committee on Ways and Means in support of this Act!
March 31, 2009
March 30, 2009
A potential revolution in the treatment of tiniest heart patients
Having a child with a single ventricle heart, I’m always on the look-out for exciting advances in the field. This recent report from Pediatric Cardiology proposes the use of engineered autologous (made from one’s own cells) tissue as an alternative to heart transplantation and radical reconstructive surgeries for heart kids. This has been on the horizon for a long time, but now it’s appearing in field standard journals . . . “the future” is getting closer and closer every day.
Cardiac Tissue Engineering: Implications for Pediatric Heart Surgery
Received: 4 February 2009 Accepted: 26 February 2009 Published online: 25 March 2009
Abstract: Children with severe congenital malformations, such as single-ventricle anomalies, have a daunting prognosis. Heart transplantation would be a therapeutic option but is restricted due to a lack of suitable donor organs and, even in case of successful heart transplantation, lifelong immune suppression would frequently be associated with a number of serious side effects. As an alternative to heart transplantation and classical cardiac reconstructive surgery, tissue-engineered myocardium might become available to augment hypomorphic hearts and/or provide new muscle material for complex myocardial reconstruction. These potential applications of tissue engineered myocardium will, however, impose major challenges to cardiac tissue engineers as well as heart surgeons. This review will provide an overview of available cardiac tissue-engineering technologies, discuss limitations, and speculate on a potential application of tissue-engineered heart muscle in pediatric heart surgery.
And of course, adult stem cells and autologous tissues have turned out to be impressively effective for adult hearts, too: Improved exercise tolerance for angina patients, ASC heart failure trials, plus more – use our blog search button for “heart” and “cardiac”.
March 28, 2009
Scientists to Test Ability of Stem Cells to “Knit Together” Torn Knee Tissue
Good news for knee injuries – all-too common among athletes, many which are career ending injuries:
A NEW technique to “knit together” torn knee tissue using stem cells is set to be tested in patients within the next year, scientists in Edinburgh were told yesterday.
Professor Anthony Hollander, who was part of the team that transplanted a windpipe made using stem cells into a patient last year, said researchers now hoped to mend torn knee cartilage – a common injury among young sportsmen and women.
It is thought the technique could prevent patients suffering serious knee problems, including osteoarthritis, for years to come. More details of the trial are set to be announced in the next month.
Researchers around the world, including in Edinburgh, are also exploring the use of stem cells in knee and bone injuries….
the technique, which will be tested initially on ten patients, involves implanting stem cells on a membrane into the middle of the lesion and sewing it up.
Even more good news:
Prof Hollander also revealed plans for further trials of transplants involving the stem-cell engineered windpipe, or trachea…
[F]ive more patients had been identified around Europe who could benefit from the treatment if they secured further funding.
He said they also hoped to start trials using laboratory-made voice boxes in the next five years. The technique could potentially be used for a range of organs, including the large blood vessels and intestine.
Shamefully a Google news search for this story (that I learned about via a Family Research Council email) yielded only one result. If this was being done with ESCs a similar search would have seen much more results.
Related: “Living bandage” heals knee injuries – Info on windpipe transplant – see video as well
March 26, 2009
Is it time to horse around?
No doubt about it, it’s a somber period for those of us who care about “ethical” bio-ethics – the course we have set ourselves upon is frightening. I for one don’t know whether to laugh or cry half the time, but this one did make me laugh:
Stem Cell Research Making Great Strides
Still Needs Some Improvements By Thomas Hagey
On location in Guelph, Ontario
Researchers at the University of Guelph have made a great contribution to the world of horse racing; however, they still have room for improvement in the controversial stem cell research arena.
When heartbroken Italian construction magnate Catelli Buttchelli begged the stem cell research department at the U of G one early summer morning to try to grow a whole horse from just a head, they knew they had their work cut out for them. continue
March 24, 2009
Dismissing Successful Science
Regular readers of this blog (and my blog Reflections of a Paralytic) know that I am a steadfast advocate for ethical research and treatments and I will frequently point out the ineffectiveness of embryonic stem cell research and the existence of more effective and ethical alternatives. Although I make it a point to stress the fact that, in the final analysis, the question of whether or not science should proceed with ESCR is really a matter of ethics, not science (in other words, it’s not a battle between ASC and ESC research, that’s not the point) – it still really bothers me when successful, ethical research is constantly dismissed or belittled by those who advocate destroying tiny human beings in the name of science.
A commenter on this post from Regular Guy Paul’s blog recently objected to some claims against ESCR by quoting from this piece on Scienceblogs.com regarding the claims from adult stem cell research advocates that ASCs have treated over 72 different diseases and/or disabilities. The author’s main objection is that there aren’t actually 72 “different” treatments, but only one treatment (Hematopoietic stem cell replacement of bone marrow) for most of those 72 conditions.
First of all, those of us who use that list of 72 ASC successes, don’t claim that it’s 72 different treatments, but that – in humans – 72 different diseases and conditions are or have been treated with ASCs – whether it was the “same” treatment or not – something that cannot be said of ESCs, even in animal models. At any rate, he goes on to say:
while these cells (ASCs) are great at doing their job, the issue with adult stem cell research is, can they do another stem cell’s job? That is, instead of making just blood, could a hematopoietic stem cell make, say, an insulin secreting pancreatic cell? The answer, despite some initial promising results around 2001, is no.
And the commenter asserts:
ASCs don’t look like they have the potential to rebuild organs or repair the CNS…Hematopoietic stem cell replacement of marrow is a far simpler matter than using ESCs to treat Parkinson’s or spinal cord injuries, or to regenerate livers and kidneys.
It must be said here that, although they have had the most success, there is way more to ASCs than just those derived from bone marrow and these folks are ignoring some pretty significant advancements that have been made in ASCR (though, in their defense they may have never seen these stories as they are typically not carried by any mainstream media outlets.) A few examples:
Re: ASCs and insulin:
5/25/07, scientists are able to make umbilical cord blood produce insulin. 3/17/09, scientists successfully use a gene called neurogenin3 to induce cells in the liver to produce insulin. said Dr. Vijay Yechoor: “They look similar to normal pancreatic islet cells (that make insulin normally).”
ASCs and Parkinson’s:
Dennis Turner was treated for Parkinson’s disease with his own neural stem cells, taken from his brain, nearly ten years ago. He went into a significant remission that lasted for about four or five years before symptoms returned. This study has now been peer-reviewed as of 2/09 and phase II trials are now in the works.
Another study with humans: Stem Cell Implant to the Brain Helps Improve Parkinson’s Symptoms – said Dr. Augusto Brazzini Armestar, MD, Director, Instituto Brazzini Radiologos Asociados, Lima, Peru when it was presented at a recent meeting for the Society of Interventional Radiology: “Stem cells from bone marrow have the ability to differentiate into neurons and other tissues”
Most recently: researchers at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., have converted skin cells from people with Parkinson’s disease into the general type of neuron that the disease destroys.
ASCs and Spinal Cord Injury:
I just did a post last week on the latest ASC-SCI success in which SCI patients were treated with bone marrow derived stem cells and received increased bladder control, regained mobility and sensation. A video accompanies the amazing story.
I link to a number of other stories on that post of SCI being treated with bone marrow derived stem cells, however, the most famous SCI study comes from Dr. Carlos Lima’s treatment of SCI patients with stem cells from their own noses using olfactory mucosa autograft transplantation – not bone marrow.
ASCs regenerating organs:
Last November scientists conducted the first stem cell derived organ transplant when they grew a new windpipe using the patients own stem cells both from bone marrow and cells taken from the healthy part of her own trachea.
Scientists have been able to grow a beating heart in the lab using ASCs.
Study uses bone marrow stem cells to regenerate skin.
Also:
There is evidence that stem cells taken from a patient’s nose could produce dopamine-producing brain cells when transplanted into the brain.
Heart derived stem cells have developed into heart muscle.
Australian trials found the injection of adult stem cells – taken from human donors’ bone marrow, abdominal fat, hip, skin or teeth – protected damaged knee cartilage for up to nine months.
Uterine Stem Cells Create New Neurons That Can Curb Parkinson’s Disease.
There have been impressive results in clinical trials using bone marrow, muscle, and fat cells in in heart therapies.
A Finnish man was able to replace his upper jaw thanks to stem cells taken from his own fatty tissue.
a 50 year old man awaiting a heart transplant was treated with muscle stem cells taken out of his thigh.
According to a Japanese study, doctors have used stem cells from liposuctioned fat to fix breast defects in women after they have undergone breast cancer surgery.
University of Manchester researchers have transformed fat tissue stem cells into nerve cells – and now plan to develop an artificial nerve that will bring damaged limbs and organs back to life.
Stem cells collected at birth from the umbilical cord may help doctors fashion new heart valves for children born with heart valve defects.
Louisville clinical trial will use cardiac stem cells to regrow muscle after attack
From a snippet of a patient’s skin, researchers have grown blood vessels in a laboratory and then implanted them to restore blood flow around the patient’s damaged arteries and veins.
Heart valves have been grown from cells in the womb.
And I’ll just end with this one since this is starting to get rather lengthy: Scientists have been able to grow a beating heart in the lab.
Obviously there’s much more than just bone marrow replacement here and ASCs are showing themselves to be way more diverse and useful than was ever originally thought. To assert otherwise is to simply ignore science and dismiss real advancements that are being made in either treating patients now or developing treatments for the future – this with science that does not use or destroy tiny human beings in the process.
As well as keeping your eye on this blog, also check out my ASCR archive at Reflections and Don Margolis’ blog for the latest in ASCR news and successes.
March 20, 2009
Another Amazing ASC-SCI Success!
Thanks to Rebecca Taylor for finding this story – which I’m sure has not been picked up by many other media outlets, if any.
DaVinci Biosciences, in collaboration with Luis Vernaza Hospital in Ecuador, this week had the results of its study demonstrating the safety and feasibility of its acute and chronic spinal cord injury treatment published in an issue of the peer-reviewed journal Cell Transplantation:
The study documents eight patients (four acute and four chronic) who were administered autologous bone marrow derived stem cells using a multiple route delivery technique. A two-year follow-up was performed on all the patients in the study who received the treatment. Using sequential MRIs, the follow-up demonstrated noticeable morphological changes within the spinal cord after administration of autologous bone marrow derived stem cells. Participating spinal cord injury patients experienced varying degrees of improvement in their quality of life, such as increased bladder control, regained mobility and sensation. Most importantly, the study demonstrated no adverse effects such as tumor formation, increased pain, and/or deterioration of function following administration of autologous bone marrow derived stem cells.
There is even a video (below) to accompany this amazing story. One patient was paralyzed for 22 years!
Studies like this should not be taken lightly by the media or the medical/scientific community at large. Spinal cord injuries – especially complete injuries – are not reversible. There is, quite literally, “no hope” 
- no common therapy or drug that will ever improve your mobility or function over time. It’s really a big mystery in the medical/scientific field which is why, especially doctors, find the injury so devastating. I think the most frustrating thing is that, for the most part, SCI patients are otherwise very healthy individuals. We just, for reasons science cannot fully figure out or explain, cannot reconnect the communication between our brain and the nerves and muscles below our point of injury.
I used to watch the TV show Trauma, Life in the ER a number of years ago and I had seen them react to many different situations including death, disease, coma, head injuries, but in one episode a young man came in with an SCI after a car accident and I never saw a reaction from the doctors like that. It was one of total devastation – for them, as doctors, healers, knowing that there was nothing they could offer that would even give that otherwise healthy young patient a chance to ever walk again – beyond a miracle. (note: this does not mean disabled life need be depressing or hopeless – see my posts linked below)
Now we see that that may be changing. These are still very early trials, but for several years now we’ve seen stories like this one – see here, here, here, here and here – where stem cells, ADULT stem cells, have been successful in repairing at least some of the damage associated with SCI. This is simply amazing, a real and true scientific breakthrough – better yet, it comes from research that does not require the use and destruction of tiny human beings.
One correction to the story above: those patients had their health improved, their mobility and function improved – the “quality” of their lives, however, has not changed as it is not dependent on their physical ability, but on their nature as human beings.
Previous posts:
People With Disabilities Can Live Normal Lives
I Enjoyed Every Minute of It
Better off Dead?
Disability Advocates Need NOT Support ESC Research!
March 15, 2009
Great opinion piece: Obama’s stem cell policy and the drowning man
Stem cell policy shift brings a sinking feeling
John Kass
12:07 PM CDT, March 14, 2009
When President Barack Obama signed his executive order to allow human embryos to be mined for their stem cells in order to help older, more powerful humans, there was much excited applause.
The applause came from so many, their eyes bright, lit as if from within. It came from those who believe in scientific progress as the answer to the problems of the modern world, believing as fervently as any monk on the slopes of Mt. Athos believes in the Resurrection of Christ.
In signing the order last week, the president said that the Bush administration, which strictly limited such research, had offered a false choice between science and morality. He said his new order “is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda—and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.”
There it was. Ideology, a pejorative applied to faith, offered up during Lent by our president. continue
March 13, 2009
Biology FAIL
This really needs to be posted to the FAIL blog. In a spectacular display of arrogance and ignorance, former President Clinton talked to CNN’s (and former, thank God, Surgeon General pick) Dr. Sanjay Gupta about the Obama Administration reversal of the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Naturally the discussion turned to the ethics of using embryos. Perhaps you weren’t aware that the embryos to be used are in no way “fertilized” or otherwise capable of becoming human babies. No, really!! So, see, it’s all good.
FAIL. Big Biology FAIL.
Read President Clinton’s remarks here and go ahead, you know you want to . . . send your entry over to FAIL blog. Hat tip to Matthew Warner, where you can view CNN video clip.
March 11, 2009
President Changes Stem Cell Policy, Talks Cloning
Yesterday President Obama did what we all knew he would do in office – overturn the Bush stem cell policy via executive order. Yuval Levin has an excellent commentary on this (h/t Paul).
Cloning was also apparently on the mind of the president as he signed this new executive order as he said in his remarks yesterday morning:
“we will ensure that our government never opens the door to the use of cloning for human reproduction. It is dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society, or any society.”
Just how do we keep from “opening the door” to cloning for reproduction anyway? If we look into the president’s past we can easily find out what his suggestion would be. Four years ago the then Senator Obama co-signed the “Human Cloning Ban Act of 2005“, a bill that would have outlawed the implantation of the “product of nuclear transplantation into a uterus or the functional equivalent of a uterus.” This would seem like a positive solution, except that it does nothing to actually ban cloning or human reproduction.
The actual process of cloning is somatic cell nuclear transfer in which a new living organism is made by jump-starting the growth process of an egg infused with a somatic cell from a donor organism. Once SCNT is accomplished, the process of cloning is complete and reproductive as this new organism is essentially an exact copy, a reproduction, of the genetic make-up of the somatic cell donor. When this process is done with a human egg and human somatic cell, naturally the result, if all goes well, is a new living human organism – a human life at its earliest stage of development.
Now, what Obama means as “human reproduction” is the actual birth of a live clone, but the only way to ensure that no clones are ever born is to ban the process of SCNT in humans totally, even for research purposes. Says cloning advocate Gregory Pence:
“Scientists are naive to think they can ban reproductive cloning and go ahead studying embryonic [therapeutic] cloning”
What else did Obama do yesterday? You might have missed this one, but kudos to Wesley Smith for his keen eye. Not only did Obama rescinded the Bush funding restrictions for ESCR, but he also rescinded Executive Order 13435 of June 20, 2007. That order, also from Bush, required funding for alternative methods of stem cell research. Obama conveniently kept this one quiet, probably because he knows that, given the choice, Americans prefer ethical alternatives to destroying human embryos for research – especially when it comes to using their tax dollars to pay for it (check out this poll, broken down by Yuval Levin in the New Atlantis).
Why in the world would president Obama rescind requiring funding for the only type of research that everyone can agree on ethically? Smith offers two possible reasons:
First, vindictiveness against all things “Bush” or policies considered by the Left to be “pro life;” and second, a desire to get the public to see unborn human life as a mere corn crop ripe for the harvest.
Either way, it was a move totally contrary to the bipartisan unity he has so strongly called for as America’s political leader.
Some things to look out for in the future:
–The re-emergence of the Human Cloning Ban and Stem Cell Protection Act, introduced in 2007 by Sens. Feinstein and Hatch; a bill similar to the proposed Cloning “Ban” of 2005 mentioned above. see article: Cloning Doubletalk
–Congress to possibly take a look at overturning the Dickey-Wicker amendment which bans the use of tax dollars to create human embryos for scientific research. see: Obama Is Leaving Some Stem Cell Issues to Congress
Previous post:
Why We Need to Ban Cloning – ASAP!!
March 2, 2009
Mesoblast Limited Presents Positive Adult Stem Cell Results To American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons
News from Australia’s Mesoblast Limited
Melbourne, Feb 27, 2009 (ABN Newswire) – Mesoblast Limited (ASX:MSB)(PINK:MBLTY) Australia’s regenerative medicine company today announced that three separate papers disclosing clinical and preclinical trial results were presented this week to orthopaedic specialists attending the 55th annual meeting of the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (AAOS) and the Orthopedic Research Society (ORS). The meetings, underway in Las Vegas, attract an estimated 15,000 orthopedic healthcare professionals from around the world.
A major highlight at the AAOS was the invited presentation given by Mr Richard de Steiger, the Principal Investigator of Mesoblast’s long bone non-union clinical trial at The Royal Melbourne Hospital. Mr de Steiger presented the positive results from the company’s successful trial in 10 patients treated with the proprietary adult stem cells for non-healing fractures of the tibia and femur.
At the ORS, Dr Tony Goldschlager of Monash University in Melbourne presented results from preclinical trials showing that Mesoblast’s allogeneic, or “off-the-shelf”, cells were safe and highly effective for interbody fusion of the cervical spine in the neck.
Also at the ORS, Professor Peter Ghosh presented preclinical results which showed that a single injection of Mesoblast’s allogeneic cells into knee joints with pre-existing osteoarthritis reduced disease progression and supported reconstitution of knee joint cartilage six months after administration.
See full release
