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New Stem Cell Source - Your Bone Marrow
BoogieChile writes "ABC News is reporting that a team of researchers from Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles, lead by Dr John Yu, are aiming to extract renewable stem cells from bone marrow - extracted from the patient him/herself - for a source of neural stem cells for treatment of brain cancers, Alzheimers and other neurological disorders.
Problem solved! Yipee!
New spinal column, anyone?" 'Course the story has no details - post anything else you can find below.
More info here
and
here
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
It doesn't focus much on the technology used, but the point that adults have stem cells within them, and scientist can now obtain them without going the politically icky embryo route.
At MIT Tech Review
Enjoy.
I understood that this had been known to be an option for some time now. The issue at hand as I understand it is that these cells are potentially not as useful as embryonic stem cells. I assume beacuse they have already differentiated to a certain degree.
Not to say that this research is not of value but I don't know that it's safe to say that it solves the whole embryonic stem cell issue.
Am I remembering incorrectly?
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0006850 F-381C-1CDC-B4A8809EC588EEDF&pageNumber=1&catI D=2
The existence of adult stem cells, while highly promising if they exist and are as functional as embryonic ones, is still in doubt.
Well, this is a tricky question. Although the article doesn't mention this directly, I'm sure that it's one of the problems they're going to encounter. Fetal stem cells are what they call totipotential, in that they have the ability to become any type of specialized cell in the body given the appropriate "signals." Stem cells in the adult bone marrow are slightly less capable of this, usually being called pluripotential. While they can differentiate into a wide number of cells, they are relatively committed to becoming some type of formed element in the blood or bone marrow. The challenge at this point will be attempting to coax the marrow stem cells into taking a neural development route, something they hadn't originally planned on doing.
-The Doc
Essentially, the embryonic stem cells have failed to produce very promising results because of rejection or tumor formation (in many cases). Adult stem cells, which are pluripotential (not totipotential), have no rejection problems because they are autologously donated. Searching Google on "bone marrow stem cells" produces a variety of results, like this plea for funding from a Russian biologist: Why cloning? or this from Science Daily or Bone Marrow Stem Cells can become almost anything.
Cedars-Sinai is pretty involved in stem cell research on a variety of levels. Do a search for stem cells on their site and you'll come up with tons of stuff.
They offer Stem Cell/Bone Marrow Transplantation as a part of their other transplantation services. Here is their FAQ about the process. http://www.csmc.edu/bloodmarrow/859.asp
Not exactly what the article is talking about though.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
Embryonic stem cells are not taken from unborn babies, they are taken from embryos, preferably while still undifferentiated. This is because what is wanted is the cells *before* they start taking on roles. The cells are then cultured. And as in the SciAm article I linked to before, it is far from certain adult stem cells even exist and work.
Note, the whole point of embryonic, is so one can clone a patient and while the cloned cells are still in undifferentiated stage, use them for treatment to avoid rejection. This is far different from your implication of somehow extracting them from a baby.
Fetal umbillical cord blood is rich in stem cells. If you're having a child it's worth looking into( Cord Blood Registry is a good source of information). One interesting thing to note is that stem cells harvested from cord blood can not only be used in the baby that produced them, but sometimes can be used in parents and siblings as well. This may be the case with other stem cells too, but I'm not sure.
Personally, it looks to me like there are 2 very different sides of the story to this.
On one hand you have the "Pro-Life" advocates saying that you can't justify the research since it might play a part in the death of an unborn embryo. You can read a few of those types of articles here and here to get a feel for that side of the story.
On the flip side the AAAS has a very compelling document here in PDF format. Also CAMR has a nice little diddy about their stance here.
Bush and the Senate seem to have made their stance on the matter known as well...so enjoy!
There is alot of discussion, and alot remains to be seen, but I thought I'd toss out some links to help everyone form their own opinion on the matter.
There was an article in the Mpls Star Tribune 2 weeks ago about the University of Minnesota licensing the rights to technology for creating stem cells from human bone marrow to a biotech firm called Athersys. The U of M researchers published a paper about this procedure in the July 4th issue of Nature. Here is a link to an article (not abstract) [nature.com].
I have a co-worker that is undegoing treatment for cancer of the spinal cord. He had a series of radiation and chemo earlier this year. A couple months ago he had some marrow extracted and stem cells cultivated. Earlier this month, he underwent a massive dose of chemo with the intent of killing off all his remaining bone marrow. A few days later, he was injected with his own stem cells. From the early results, it looks like his treatment is working. He's being treated at the University of Wisconsin. His type of cancer is rare, but nearly always fatal, so hopefully this experimental treatment will work for him.
According to this stem cell transplant from the patient themselves is "standard and contemporary treatment" (in contrast to an "emerging therapy") for multiple myeloma (described here).
I believe this is a more refined form of what used to be called a "bone marrow transplant", but someone else probably can explain that in excurciating detail. :-)
I have friend who had this done and she is well on her way to recovery.
Cheers,
Richard