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Stem Cell Injections Pioneering Step Forward?
sanspeak writes "Indian Doctors at All India Institute of Medical Sciences have performed a radical new operation of sorts by pioneering the method of stem cell injections. Ishika Gupta, a seven month old girl child who was suffering from cardiac myopathy, was treated by injecting stem cells into her heart from bone in her own leg. AIIMS has marked a global first in pioneering stem cell medicine by the "injection method''." From the article: "There will now be a national stem cell centre at AIIMS which will coordinate the research and its applications. The statistics speak for themselves. After six months, 56% of the affected (dead muscle) area injected with these cells had shown improvement." Additional details on this therapy available from the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel and Medical News Today.
The attractive thing about these results to many is that is identifies a built in population of stem cells in adult individuals that could be harvested for some applications which gets around certain issues related to the Bush administrations religiously imposed dogma on science and progress.
The problem with this approach is that often, they really do not know what cells they are injecting. Sure they are harvesting cells from the bone marrow which do contain some stem cell populations. But here is the deal: These cells are already partially differentiated. They are not totipotent. Certainly there will be some applications where you can take partially differentiated cells and inject them into some systems that will show positive results, such as the cardiac improvements observed in these studies. However, this will not be generalizeable to other disorders such as vision loss or other degenerative diseases.
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injected stem cells tend to transmongrify into tumors.
this tech is not ready for hospitals.
And yet federal money can't go to stem cell research?
And yet again someone missinformed. Bush DID NOT BAN Federal Funding of Stem Cell Research. He banned Federal Funding going to Embryonic Stem Cell Research on new lines. This research used Adult Stem Cells. Something that Federal money can go to.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Directly on-topic? Well, no, but I guarantee there will be several positively moderated messages in this thread that don't get it right.
- This article isn't talking about embryonic stem cells, so any references to the Bush administration embryonic stem cell policy are utterly irrelevant
But for those who still don't get it:
- There isn't a "ban" on any kind of stem cell research in the US. There is a restriction on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research - entities are still free to perform embryonic stem cell research (see California's recent US$3 billion bond initiative to support such research in the state)
- The Bush administration is the first administration to allow any federal funding at all for embryonic stem cell research. Granted, this is partly due to timing, but it's still a point of information.
- When is an embryo "life"? At some arbitrary time? When it's in a woman's womb? When it's "wanted" by someone as the product of actions to create a child? When and how does it become life? What's the magic cutoff? When and why is it ok to destroy it? When it can exist on its own? What does "exist on its own" mean? I'm not saying any of these things necessarily should preclude embryonic stem cell research, and indeed, federal funding for it. But doesn't it seem that those ethical questions should be addressed or at least considered? It may well be that society collectively decides that the benefit outweighs ethical concerns. But bear in mind, too, that farming more developed human life for research would no doubt yield untold answers to questions that might hold great benefit. Does that mean we should do it? If not, why is that any different? Scientifically, it would seem clear that it's a life the second the embryo comes into being...
(Note: No, I am not anti-abortion, but do think we should acknowledge that abortion isn't just a "woman's choice" or a "medical decision" (unless it is a decision in relation to the safety of the mother). It is, essentially, the state sanctioned ability to end a life when it is not wanted by the mother. Let's at least acknowledge what we're doing instead of hiding it under the blinders of "choice" or "scientific progress".)
Bush banned Federal Funding of Embryonic Stem Cell research on new lines only. If you get private funding, you can do research on new embryoninc lines. Or, you can use Federal Funding on the old lines or Adult Stem Cells. This new technique used Adult Stem Cells. They can get federal funding for this.
There is no outright ban. It is a myth.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
There's a post on fat wallet that goes into this topic a bit. Basically it's a waste if you're only going to have one child because the defect will be present in the cord blood as well. Cord blood storage is discussed as well as pricing and previous user's experiences with them. The American Red Cross donation program is also mentioned as well. Interesting read for those of you who are passing your slashdot genes along ;)
-B
I did a stem cell donation for my brother last week. It cost about $6000 and involved hooking up veins in both arms to a continuous centrifuge that pumped blood out of one arm, centrifuged it to remove the stem cells, and then injected the plasma and red cells back into the other arm. I had to get injections of Neupogen for four days prior to what the docs called the "harvest".
I didn't have to have long needles stuck into my bone marrow. The worst part was not being able to move my arms for 5 1/2 hours for any reason because of the needles in veins in my elbows.
They got 3 times as much material as they need and I am trying to arrange to have the rest stockpiled in case I need them at some later date. They needed 8 million cells per kilo of body weight for a cross donation, but only 4 million for self-donation.
There isn't a "ban" on any kind of stem cell research in the US. There is a restriction on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research - entities are still free to perform embryonic stem cell research (see California's recent US$3 billion bond initiative to support such research in the state)
But this kind of cutting edge research needs gov't funding for several reasons: it's very expensive; it's long term (too much so to attract enough private money); and the federal government can make a big difference in funding if it chooses to.
The Bush administration is the first administration to allow any federal funding at all for embryonic stem cell research. Granted, this is partly due to timing, but it's still a point of information.
Wrong. Here's citation #1 about Clinton's support of stem cell research, and here's citation #2 and #3. I think that Slate, CNN, and ABC are generally trustworthy.
And it would be nice if people stopped clouding the issue with abortion arguments. While there are some similarities, the analogy breaks down very quickly, and argument by analogy is generally suspect. Oh, and BTW, here's an ABC article with some interesting statistics on ESR, including about 60% support for both ESR and federal funding of it by US citizens.
The ban is just a bit broader than you imply: there is a ban on embryonic stem cell research using new stem cells at any institution that receives federal funding, e.g. universities or drug companies with NIH funding.
Were the ban merely on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, it would not be such a problem. The problem is that universities and many drug companies are prevented from doing such research even with independent funding.
I can't let this one go.
(1) The Bush Administration does not have a "religiously imposed dogma on science and progress". There is a significant segment of the American population that is concerned about scientists initiating the process of conception for the sole purpose of ripping apart the component stem cells while receiving federal funding to do so. Corporations and universities are welcome to continue studying embryonic stem cells, just not while using federal research grants.
(2) Unlike the aformentioned Embryonic Stem Cells, this process is another form of Adult Stem Cell research, which is using the patient's own stem cells to culture and augment existing organs. There has never been any political problems with this branch of stem cell research, and the Bush Administration has advanced this research alternative several times as the preferred path.
(3) Bone Marrow has long been known to be a source of red blood cells as well as muscle stem cells. If they are partially differentiated as marrow cells, they are still in the same family as cardiovascular muscles, and thus are a prime candidate for this type of injection research. It would be like taking neurons from the brain and injecting them into the spinal column, to see if the cells can merge and augment the spinal tissues.
Part of the problem of degenerative diseases is that there is a genetic problem with the adult, so transplanting cells with the same genetic makeup within the same adult will not magically create a missing protein... that is where we need to initiate aditional research with inter-adult stem cell research, and proceed from there.
Notice that this is an exact copy of this other comment here which was posted 8 minutes before this one. I don't know if this is a case of plaguerism on one person's part, two people's part, or no people's part, but it sure is fishy.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
There is no ban on stem cell research or even funding stem cell research - there is a ban on funding /embryonic/ stem cell research which has nothing to do with the original article - which people have pointed out over and over again.
The value of adult stem cells has been shown over and over again. The value of embryonic stem cells has never been shown and, in fact, embryonic stem cells cause all sorts of havoc when injected into another individual. Havoc like sudden cancers caused by the embryonic cells not adapting well to life in a grown host.
Clear, Dark Skies
There was a case in Royal Oak MI where a 16 year old with severe heart damage was treated with stem cells from his bone marrow. This was almost 2 years ago and seems to have been a complete success, but you never read about it. It saved the kid from needing a heart transplant.
m ai n542962.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/03/06/tech/
or google for royal oak heart stem cell
As a quick google would have told you.
Clear, Dark Skies
You're completely wrong. Universities and other institutions can and do already work around this. For example, the University of Wisconsin, where I'm located, is launching the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, a partly private research institute, which will allow it to get around this issue. This is well known and is being done at dozens of sites around the country.
Technically, it's true--technically, states were free to set the drinking age to whatever they saw fit, and technically, research labs are free to conduct embryonic stem cell research on new cell lines.
[...]
There exist only a bare handful of labs who can afford to lose government funding. When the government says "Do this or you'll lose your federal funding", a PI can either do what the government says or close up shop--which means losing years of research, losing his livelihood, and firing a group of highly trained, carefully sought-after and brilliant scientists.
I'm sorry, but you're completely and utterly wrong.
Research institutions with federal funding are already easily working around the federal funding restrictions.
For example, the University of Wisconsin - currently the number one recipient of federal research grant money in general, and recipient of the greatest number of R01 NIH grants - launched the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, a private research institute, in part to work around these restrictions. The institute can pursue embryonic stem cell research without affecting federal funding at the University of Wisconsin in any way. The NIH even has guidelines and recommendations about how institutions can work around federal funding guidelines for embryonic stem cell research, so as not to jeopardize other funding. California is doing the same sort of thing.
"Acknowledge the reality of the situation," indeed.
This is getting ridiculous with all the posts trying to use this to justify the effective ban on embryonic stem cell research. IF you belIeve that this research is immoral that's fine - I do understand your opinion and I have no problem with it though I disagree.
BUT stop claiming that the denial of federal funds doesn't make embryonic stem cell research in the US very difficult. Stop claiming that there is no merit to embryonic stem cell research - that is just patently untrue (yes I am a scientist and I have worked with EC but not ES cells). Look up Parkinson's and Diabetes and get a developmental biologist to explain to you why embryonic stem cell research provides hope for a cure to these diseases. Or read NIH's own summary on stem cell research
http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics1.asp
Like I said if you have strong opinions that embryonic cell research is immoral - stand up for yourself and just say so. I respect that much more than trying to trick other people into accepting your agenda with naked FUD.