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 Cardiologyproposes 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.
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.
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.
CNN had this as their homepage featured story this morning . . . let’s hope the Obama admin health and science advisors will see it and draw the proper conclusions: more money for ethical research with adult stem cells that works, not embronyic stem cells.
Woman given windpipe
created in laboratory
LONDON, England (CNN) — Doctors have given a woman a new windpipe with tissue engineered from her own stem cells in what experts have hailed as a “milestone in medicine.”
The breakthrough allowed Claudia Castillo, 30, to receive a new section of trachea — an airway essential for breathing — without the risk that her body would reject the transplant.
Castillo was given the stem cell surgery, the controversial branch of medicine that some say could lead to human cloning, after suffering a severe lung collapse.
The condition, caused by long-term tuberculosis left Castillo, a Colombian now living in Barcelona, unable to carry out simple domestic duties or care for her two children.
The only conventional option was a major operation to remove her left lung, a risky procedure with a high mortality rate. continue
I’ve been shocked at the number of visitors the sickle cell anemia posts tend to draw to this blog. Well, here we go again! More great news. A little boy is cured of the disease from cells taken from his baby sister’s umbilical cord. I don’t want to give away the details of this fabulous “human interest” story, so just take a few minutes to read it:
Brentwood boy whose family moved here from Panama is cured of sickle cell anemia
By Sandy Kleffman
Contra Costa Times
Article Launched: 06/21/2008 07:56:59 PM PDT
Edna Chang-Vega and her husband left behind good jobs, a comfortable home and extended family in Panama in the hope of obtaining better treatment for Isaac, who suffered from debilitating sickle cell anemia.
Worried about Isaac’s bouts with pneumonia and frequent hospitalizations, the family moved in with a cousin in Antioch. They figured someone in the United States could help ease Isaac’s symptoms.
“Everybody knows that the United States is a big, big country and they are very advanced in medicine,” Chang-Vega said.
Their sacrifice would succeed beyond anything they could have imagined.
Next came an unplanned pregnancy and a perfect match. In 2005, doctors at Children’s Hospital Oakland transplanted into Isaac umbilical cord blood from his young sister, Eunice.
The 11-year-old is now cured of a disease that just a few years ago was considered incurable.
“We were very lucky to come to the right place,” Chang-Vega said last week as she sat in her Brentwood home. “We prayed to God to help us, and somehow he helped us.” continue
More posts about sickle cell anemia, start here, or type in “sickle cell” on the search feature
According to a Griffith University study, published last Thursday in the journal Stem Cells, there is evidence that stem cells taken from a patient’s nose could produce dopamine-producing brain cells when transplanted into the brain. It has been a success in mice anyway.
I find this study particularly interesting because just a few years ago human spinal cord injury patients were also treated with stem cells from their own noses and every one of the seven patients showed improved ASIA motor scores, among other improvements (Read testimony from patient Jacki Rabon, or watch video).
Two year old Nate Liao is the first person to be successfully treated with cord blood and bone marrow stem cells to correct his epidermolysis bullosa (EB). Now doctor’s say they have set the path for a cure for his painful genetic skin disease. Those who suffer from this disease experience a life of chronic pain, blisters, sores, amputations, infections and it can eventually lead to cancer. Nate received the stem cells from his healthy brother last October. Nate’s brother Jacob, who also has the disease, received a cord-blood transplant from an unrelated donor on May 30. Watch video
While scientists back off claims that embryonic stem cells will ever treat human patients, ethical “adult” stem cells continue to impact the lives of many.
More human patients will be treated with “adult” stem cells:
DURHAM, NC–( Marketwire – April 16, 2008 ) – Aldagen, Inc. today announced that the first patient has been treated in a Phase III clinical trial for ALD-101. Aldagen is developing ALD-101 to improve cord blood transplants used to treat inherited metabolic diseases in pediatric patients. ALD-101 is a population of adult stem cells isolated from cord blood using Aldagen’s proprietary technology. The company commenced the Phase III clinical trial of ALD-101 to evaluate its ability to accelerate neutrophil and platelet engraftment following cord blood transplantation in these patients.
40 pediatric patients with inherited metabolic diseases undergoing a cord blood transplant will be treated in the multi-site Phase III clinical study. The primary goal of the study is to determine if ALD-101 can accelerate the restoration of circulating platelets. A 24-patient Phase I/II study of ALD-101 was previously conducted and a statistically significant reduction in the time to platelet engraftment was observed in patients receiving ALD-101 as part of a cord blood transplant compared to patients who had received a cord blood transplant without ALD-101 in an earlier independent clinical trial.
There are several stories here, but let’s first give a hat tip to Don Margolis for blogging this article about little Lydia Olmsted, born with an ocular defect, septo-optic dysplasia. You may recall reading about another little girl here, Rylea, born with another ocular defect, optic nerve hypoplasia.
So, what are the stories here?
First, hope where there was none. Lydia can see better after having traveled to China to receive therapies derived from umbilical cord cells. Just like Rylea.
These therapies are not FDA approved. American stem cell scientists as well as other medical professionals warn patients to be cautious because these treatments have not been submitted to the protocols required in FDA clinical trials.
But both these families are well-informed about the novelty of the treatments they have submitted their daughters to. Both the girls can see things they could not before. American physicians time and time again offered them no hope. What would you do? And what do future families stand to gain because these families were willing to not only take the risk, but in addition, pay for it, too?
How many opportunities, therapies, and cures have we lost (to foreign researchers?) . . . not because of caution, but because of a pathological obsession with the use of embryonic stem cells? Where would be now if all those minds, all that talent, and truly — all that money had gone to adult stem cell research?
True science is creative. Imaginative and resourceful minds show us that ethical boundaries don’t inhibit productive research. Scientists on a quest to study cystic fibrosis found that genetic mutations in mice could not replicate the disease as it is expressed in humans, so they turned to pigs. Yet, even the genetically altered pigs were not able to inherit full blown cystic fibrosis. That didn’t stop them either. Thinking outside the petri dish offered a solution. Relying on natural reproduction – good old -fashioned breeding, the Iowa researchers are expecting their first batch of baby pigs with cystic fibrosis any time now. These little piggies with cystic fibrosis will pretty closely model their human counterparts.
The moral of the story? Even on the quest to save lives, real science need not destroy embryonic humans.
– 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.
Two year old Nate Liao is the first person to be 
Adult Stem Cell Awareness 
