Possible Stem Cell Treatment for the Unborn!

Up to 40 percent of premature births are caused by a rupture in the membrane surrounding the foetus, causing labor. Babies born before 24 weeks have a poor chance of survival while later babies are at higher risk of birth complications.

(L-R): Dr Anna David, Dr Adam Squires and Dr Che Connon who are working to create stem cell patches to prevent early birth.

Previous attempts to treat this problem have not been successful, but some UK researchers are hoping that they’ve finally found the answer. A team from the Reading school of pharmacy have successfully developed sac membrane in the lab using stem cells from placentas obtained after births and created a ‘repair’ patch designed to be placed over the rupture using keyhole surgery. Dr Che Connon, who published the findings in the journal Tissue Engineering, told the UK Daily Mail,

‘We were able to manipulate the cells to make a material that is almost the same as a woman’s natural membrane.

‘It is tough and we are confident it would do the job and hold a pregnancy in place.’

And Dr Anna David, a consultant obstetrician and expert in premature birth at University College of London Hospitals Trust, said:

‘If we could use these membranes then we would be able to preserve pregnancies and save women from losing their babies.

‘This would be particularly beneficial for women whose membranes rupture before 24 weeks as the chances of these babies surviving are not very high. Before 20 weeks their lungs are simply not viable.’

Using non-embryonic stem cells to help save unborn babies? Come on. It really doesn’t get more “pro-life” than that! Dr Connon believes human trials will start in two years’ time and the treatment could be introduced by 2016.

Photo via UK Daily Mail

Pioneering stem cell bandage receives approval for clinical trial

Good news:

Millions of people with knee injuries could benefit from a new type of stem cell bandage treatment if clinical trials are successful. The world’s first clinical trial for the treatment of patients with torn meniscal cartilage has received approval from the UK regulatory agency, the MHRA1, to commence.

The current treatment for the majority of tears is the removal of the meniscus, a procedure that often results in the early onset of osteoarthritis.

The Phase I trial, one of the first in the UK to be approved using stem cells, will treat meniscal tear patients with a cell bandage product, seeded with the patient’s own, expanded, stem cells.

The cell bandage, produced by Azellon Ltd, a University of Bristol spin-out company, is focused on the research, development and commercialisation of an adult autologous (patient’s own) stem cell technology which in vitro (tissue culture) has shown great promise for the healing of meniscal tears.

The trial is designed primarily to test the safety profile of Azellon’s cell bandage in ten meniscal tear patients, but some information on whether or not it works will also be obtained. The bandage, containing the patient’s own stem cells will be implanted in a simple surgical procedure using a specially designed instrument that helps to deliver the cells into the injured site as a first-line treatment in place of removal of the meniscus. Patients will be closely monitored for safety over a five-year follow-up period.

Professor Anthony Hollander, Chief Scientific Officer at Azellon Ltd and Head of the School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Bristol, said: “The approval we have received from the MHRA is an important milestone in the development of stem cell therapies in the UK. These cells hold much scientific and medical promise but we can only know if they work or not by testing them out in clinical trials.”

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Interview With Man Cured of HIV by Adult Stem Cell Transplant

Here’s another follow-up to a story I mentioned on my website a few years ago:

Timothy Ray Brown tested positive for HIV back in 1995, but has now entered scientific journals as the first man in world history to have that HIV virus completely eliminated from his body in what doctors call a “functional cure.”

Brown was living in Berlin, Germany back in 2007, dealing with HIV and leukemia, when scientists there gave him a bone marrow stem cell transplant that had astounding results.

“I quit taking my HIV medication the day that I got the transplant and haven’t had to take any since,” said Brown, who has been dubbed “The Berlin Patient” by the medical community.

Brown’s amazing progress continues to be monitored by doctors at San Francisco General Hospital and at the University of California at San Francisco medical center.

“I’m cured of HIV. I had HIV but I don’t anymore,” he said, using words that many in the scientific community are cautiously clinging to.

Read more – with video interview.

This is incredible – and accomplished using ethically derived stem cells. Pass it on!

Previous posts (from my website):
Did Adult Stem Cells Cure an AIDS Patient??
More on Possible Future Stem Cell Trials for AIDS Treatment

A major advance for tracheal stenosis using adult stem cells

It was the end of a long battle for Ciaran Finn-Lynch, born with a windpipe that was essentially too narrow to function. Several prior attempts to rebuild his trachea had bought him some time, but last November complications with a tracheal stent had once again caused massive bleeding. His surgeons had few options but to turn to an innovative approach to rebuilding an airway using a donor trachea, which would be “fleshed out” with Ciaran’s own cells so that his body would not reject the tissue. So far, so good! Read the full story here.  The procedure had been sucessfully carried out an adult woman several years ago: Lab grown windpipe: another adult stem cell success.

Dick Van Dyke to Help Raise Adult Stem Cell Awareness!

God love him! Dick Van Dyke has been named the first-ever spokesperson of Cell Therapy Foundation, a public charity founded in 2007, to advance awareness about the benefits of adult stem cell research. From CTF:

Mr. Van Dyke is scheduled to record a series of public service announcements focused on educating the public that adult stem cells, which come from bone marrow, fat, umbilical cord blood and placenta, skin, muscle, and other sources, have healing functions that are leading to new therapies for many diseases. An avid graphic artist and animation hobbyist, Mr. Van Dyke will also participate in the development of an animation film project that will visually explain the repair functionality of adult stem cells in a fun and creative way.

“I am truly impressed by the potential that adult stem cell research has already shown and am hopeful that by getting the message to more people, we can fund additional research that could positively impact thousands of lives around the world,” said Mr. Van Dyke.

This is particularly exciting news considering so many other celebrities, including Van Dyke’s former onscreen wife Mary Tyler Moore, have been using their voices to advance stem cell research that destroys human embryos.

If you can, please help support the Cell Therapy Foundation

Marine Vet to Participate in First U.S. ASC Clinical Trial for SCI

Many thanks to Dr. David Prentice for calling my attention to this awesome news!

TCA Cellular Therapy, LLC has enrolled its first patient to participate in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first adult stem cell clinical trial to treat spinal cord injuries. Enrollee and Marine Veteran, Matt Cole was paralyzed from the chest down in a 2005 insurgent attack in Iraq.

…

“Many spinal cord injury patients have no effective treatment available at this time,” stated Dr. Gutnisky. “I’m very encouraged by the results of the pre-clinical trials and anticipate this may become a significant therapy for these patients in the near future.”

Utilizing TCA Cellular’s proprietary therapy, a couple of thousand adult stem cells have been extracted from the patient’s own bone marrow, Mesenchymal Stem Cells have been separated, purified, multiplied to millions and will be infused into Cole’s spinal cord later this month.

This is great! Though it’s still a very early trial, researchers have had great success in the past few years using ASCs to restore some feeling and movement in patients with SCI: see here, here, here, here, here and here. And how nice that we’re starting out by helping one of our wounded service men! There actually is an Armed Forces Institute for Regenerative Medicine that, just a few years ago, received an $85 million Federal grant for orthopedic stem cell surgery for veterans injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have another trial in the works involving spray-on skin cells for burn victims.

Ironic that this comes within a week of the announcement that Geron was re-approved for the very first embryonic stem cell trial to treat spinal cord injury. Why do I have a feeling that, though the AP surprised us recently with a very favorable article on adult stem cell success, no mainstream media outlets will be reporting on this like they did the Geron trial?

AP Touts ADULT Stem Cell Research

You know, after all its hype of embryonic stem cell research over the years, I can’t help but think that the MSM is a little frustrated that they have not been able to report on any actual benefits from these cells. Meanwhile the success of adult stem cells is getting harder for them to ignore. The headline: Adult stem cell research far ahead of embryonic. Umm…a little late to the party there, folks, but thanks for finally taking notice:

For all the emotional debate that began about a decade ago on allowing the use of embryonic stem cells, it’s adult stem cells that are in human testing today. An extensive review of stem cell projects and interviews with two dozen experts reveal a wide range of potential treatments.

Adult stem cells are being studied in people who suffer from multiple sclerosis, heart attacks and diabetes. Some early results suggest stem cells can help some patients avoid leg amputation. Recently, researchers reported that they restored vision to patients whose eyes were damaged by chemicals.

Apart from these efforts, transplants of adult stem cells have become a standard lifesaving therapy for perhaps hundreds of thousands of people with leukemia, lymphoma and other blood diseases.

“That’s really one of the great success stories of stem cell biology that gives us all hope,” says Dr. David Scadden of Harvard, who notes stem cells are also used to grow skin grafts.

“If we can recreate that success in other tissues, what can we possibly imagine for other people?”

Read more and do browse our archives for a lengthy list of ASCR therapeutic successes.

Geron Cleared for First ESCR Human Trial

11 months after it halted the trial the FDA has given the Geron Corp permission to go ahead with the world’s first human trial of a treatment derived from embryonic stem cells:

The world’s first authorized test in people of a treatment derived from human embryonic stem cells has been cleared to begin by the Food and Drug Administration.

The trial will test cells developed by Geron Corporation and the University of California, Irvine in patients with new spinal cord injuries.

The F.D.A. had initially cleared the clinical trial in January, 2009, in what was viewed at the time as a research milestone.

But before the study could begin, the agency then put a so-called hold on the trial after cysts were discovered in some mice injected with the cells. Geron had to do another mouse study and develop better ways to check the purity of its cells.

On Friday, the company announced in a press release that the F.D.A. had lifted the hold. Geron shares rose in morning trading.

Research milestone? HA! How’s this for a research milestone: 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. I know this from personal experience. I have been paralyzed for 11 years since I received a spinal cord injury in a car accident my junior year of high school. That is why it is simply amazing that, for a few years now, adult stem cells have been successfully used in early human trials to restore some feeling and movement in long term spinal cord injury patients (see here, here, here, here, here and here). All, as Wesley Smith points out, without the fanfare of the MSM.

Whatever happens with this new trial – if it ever happens (Geron has been promising this trial for years now) – will not change the fact that human embryonic stem cell research is unethical, period. I’d sure love to be able to walk again, but I would never accept the harvesting of another human life, no matter how small, for my own comfort.

Blind Patients’ Sight Restored With Help from Their Own Stem Cells

Bloomberg reports:

Patients blinded in one or both eyes by chemical burns regained their vision after healthy stem cells were extracted from their eyes and reimplanted, according to a report by Italian researchers at a scientific meeting.

The tissue was drawn from the limbus, an area at the junction of the cornea and white part of the eye. It was grown on a fibrous tissue, then layered onto the damaged eyes. The cells grew into healthy corneal tissue, transforming disfigured, opaque eyes into functioning ones with normal appearance and color, said researchers led by Graziella Pellegrini of the University of Modena’s Center for Regenerative Medicine.

The stem-cell treatment restored sight to more than three- quarters of the 112 patients treated, Pellegrini said yesterday in a presentation at the International Society for Stem Cell Research meeting. The patients were followed for an average of three years and some for as long as a decade, Pellegrini said.

Read more

H/t FRC blog

Adult Stem Cells still hold the best hope for EB

The University of Minnesota is several months into a new FDA approved trial for the treatment of dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (EB), which is the most severe form.  The Edlings hope their son Daylon, scheduled to begin treatment this month, will benefit – even though the trial itself is risky. Daylon will receive a bone marrow transplant to trigger the  production of collagen VII. Of course, all of this is the “magic” of adult stem cells at work. We hope and pray the results will save Daylon’s life, and lead to the same life-saving therapies for others living with the most severe EB.  See the full story here.

See also: Cure Found for Child’s “Untreatable” Skin Disease! and Adult stem cells may help children with a severe skin disease