Stem Cells to Treat Brain Injury in Children

BigDukeSix writes "The first stem cell trial with widespread public health implications is set to begin in Houston. From the article: "Trauma is far and away the main cause of death and disability among children, and the main reason children die from trauma is brain injury...The clinical trial is the first to apply stem cells to treat traumatic brain injury. It does not involve embryonic stem cells.""

Comments

Not embryionic?

[geoffrobinson]

Well, that's good news. No ethical dilemma.

It would have been nice if the media stressed the promise of non-embrionic stem cells to the public more (there has been some stories), but it is nice to see it now.

Re:Not embryionic?

[thatoneguy_jm]

This is exactly what we need, at this point - if it can be shown just how helpful stem stell research can be, then perhaps people will start to view it not as a thing to be feared, but a thing to be looked into and studied. And, as noted, by not using embryonic cells controversy is avoided. It's a win-win-win situation: the kids get treated, the research is given a better name, and the ultra-conservatives shouldn't be upset about it.

Re:More Information:

[Red Flayer]

"...it's a real pity that Christopher Reeve [chrisreevehomepage.com] had to leave us before we made these advances."

Why? What makes an actor who played a comic book hero worthy of mention (other than the fact that he championed the cause), instead of the thousands of children who were and are never able to realize their potential?

Re:More Information:

[Slightly Askew]

(other than the fact that he championed the cause)

That is exactly the reason. Do you realize how much money would have poured in for this research if they could have made Superman walk again using stem cells? It's not about the person, it's about their publicity and their power to help the cause. Remember Ryan White? I went to school with the kid and, frankly, he was an ass. However, his celebrity status did more for AIDS research and education than the deaths of 50 unknown kids with AIDS.

Benefits of Embryonic Stem Cells

[SeanDuggan]

I don't know this area particularly well, but I am sure that if the use of adult stem cells was in every way a replacement for the use of embryonic cells, then researchers would simply want to use those.

But they do want access to embryonic stem cells, which suggests to me that embryonic stem cells have some useful property that adult stems cells don't.
They have a higher potential benefit in that they may be more able to develop into a larger numbers of types of tissue. Basically, it was initially thought that stem cells from marrow could only be used to generate red blood cells whereas it seemed perfectly evident that infant stem cells could turn into all kinds of tissue given they're what the body starts from. Since then, we've found that adult stem cells can transform into a number of different kinds of tissues. *wry grin* Not that most of these experiments try to actually transdifferentiate the stem cells. If you read into the details of these experiments, most come down to "we inject a bunch of stem cells into part of the body and see if anything happens."

Basically, the whole thing is over potential. The proponents of infant stem cells say that those stem cells may work better and the adult stem cell people are finding ways to use stem cell therapy without the requiring the sacrifice of another human life for a potential benefit.