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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.""
Some more information on using stem cells from bone marrow to grow neurons can be found here.
As you can see from the date of the above referenced article, the idea of using stem cells derived from bone marrow to treat brain injury has been around for a while, but now that we've finally progressed to human trials, this field is going to get very exciting very fast. This has the potential to completely rewrite the textbooks on brain & nerve trauma...it's a real pity that Christopher Reeve had to leave us before we made these advances.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Man shouldn't have that power!
So... should we Ban All Doctors?
Bring it on and let Darwinism Rule.
Well that wouldn't do any good because you are placing adult stem cell research and ID into the same group. Stem cell research does not hinge on Evolution or vise versa. Typically, ID'ers believe stem cell research is beneficial, ADULT stem cell research. And the evidence shows that adult stem cell research has produced fabulous results. It's the embryonic stem cell research that most ID'ers don't agree with because it destroys a human life. As a side note though, embryonic stem cell research has done nothing more than end human life. It hasn't really shown itself to be useful yet.
Then maybe we can grow a new web page and read the article.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
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.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
It's only a Phase I trial. Phase I trials are very early trials predominantly concerned with establishing safe levels of the parameters. It won't show effectiveness.
I find it a little curious to see that the bone marrow stem cells would be injected intravenously since the blood-brain barrier could limit the stem cells from reaching their destination. I presume that they figure that with trauma, blood would easily get to the damaged area. I think it is extremely hopeful to expect that enough stem cells would latch onto the damaged areas to make any difference. Also it is unclear if they are doing this for the acutely injured brain or for children who were damaged at some point in the past.
If I was a betting man, I would not bet on the side of any positive result.
As someone who has seen a newborn die from braininjuries from up close(my little niece*), i salute the effort in this line of research. Since TFA mentions that this treatment does not use the embryotic (sp?) stemcells, i fail to see why this would become one of those ethical debates. Like with C. Reeves, i just wish they had developed this sooner :(
* = a common spelling mistake
"Sarcasm is for *winners*, Alan." - Charlie Harper (Two and a Half Men)
A couple of days ago people were freaking because experimental drugs were being used on India's poor. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/1 9/1838223&tid=191&tid=219
So how come nobody's up in arms about this experimental procedure being used on children in Texas? Presumably the Indian subjects were in need of treatment too.
And who's decision should it be to decide what power man "should" or "should not" have? Please spare me the doctrine of the ignorant masses. I'd like to believe that if there is a God, he/she/it put that lump of grey matter between your ears so that you could use that power to help yourself and others. While that cause seems lost with you, I congratulate the doctors and scientists who are using science and medecine to help their fellow man.
at the pearly gates. St. Peter is at gates, interviewing each person as they get to the front of the queue. Suddenly, a man appears in surgical scrubs walks up to the front of the line, nods to St. Peter, and enters the kingdom of heaven. Outraged, the man at the back of the line chrages up to St. Peter and demands to know why the doctor does not have to stand in line with the rest of the people. St. Peter replies, "Oh, that was God...he just thinks he's a doctor."
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
From a press release from the Aplastic Anemia & MDS Foundation:
"The President yesterday signed into law a bill to authorize $79 million to establish a new national registry of 150,000 umbilical cord blood units. The "Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act" was approved by the Senate on December 16 and had already passed the House of Representatives last May."
is cancerous growth of stem cells. Granted, these are not embryonic stem cells (ESCs) but this being the first human trial for somatic stem cells (SSCs) I hope nothing goes wrong. We really don't know every single signal pathway affecting stem cell differentiation, this kind of treatment is really simple, but blind. For example, what will the effect of all those extraction, culturing and IV injection procuders will be on the human SSCs? Some can argue that the current situation of stem cell field is premature for this kind of experiment.
Stem cells might be a neat buzzword to get funding, but as a parent of a child with serious brain damage, I can tell you that this is more likely a politically motivated stunt to grease the slippery slope of stem cell research, than something that will generate measurable results. After all, nobody wants to hurt brain damaged children.
The reason I'm so cynical is that babies are very resilient, and for the most part they are like stem cell factories on their own. As they grow, they produce new brain and nerve material, which adults cannot do. It is adult disease and injury (and greed) that fuels the stem cell craze, since our adult bodies cannot heal like young children can.
My daughter had a stroke two months before she was born. This stroke wiped out 85% of the left hemisphere of her brain, replacing it with a fluid filled cyst. When she was three months old, she had an operation to add a drainage passage to this cyst, as it was filling with cerebral spinal fluid and had expanded to fill the entire left half of her cranium cavity. This operation cut through parts of her brain, leaving her completely blind.
At nine months of age, the drainage passage had collapsed, and the cyst had enlarged to block all drainage of cerebral spinal fluid from her brain. Her head swelled with a condition know as hydrocephalus, and she almost died. That night, the CAT scans showed that 75% of the volume that should have been occupied by her brain was filled with fluid. She had an emergency operation to install an artificial drainage valve (a shunt). This event was catastrophic, and was like having her "reset" switch activated, she had to re-learn everything.
Now, the good news. She is eighteen months old now, and has recovered remarkably. Her last CAT scan showed that the original cyst had been reduced to only 25% of the left half of her brain, and the right half is completely restored. The original passage that was cut, that caused her blindness, has healed shut. Her vision is steadily improving and she shows signs that she may be functional without the use of a cane someday. Sure, she's a little behind developmentally, but she is showing lots of promise. All of her healing was without the use of any stem cell treatment, because babies are stem cell factories. Her same injuries would have killed an adult, several times over.
-- Len
On behalf of the Slashdot anti-religion crowd, please stop turning every topic into an unprovoked attack on religion and Bush. It's making us look bad. Especially when the attack is as stupid as this.
Almost every real advance that has been made using stem cells has been made with either adult stem cells or cord blood.
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.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
Just another batch of evidence to show the need to research non-embryonic stem cells... embryonic stem cells have yet to yeild anything extra-ordinary.
This just in! 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the population.
Hate to argue against Segan, but those "wasteful wars" are part of what got us to where we are today. Without the V2 would we have space exploration? Without the typhus and cholera of world war I would there have been as much pressure for antibiotics and insecticides? Without constant warfare would we have had any reason to move from copper to bronze to iron to steel? Without britain stripping her forests for the navy would she have needed to move to coal power? Ok, so wars destroy, and for that I condemn them, but you can't say "if we held hands and sang ku-bah-yah for 20 centuries we would have flying cars now". War is part of the history which brought us here, and part of what drove our progress.
Boys from the City. Not yet caught by the Whirlwind of Progress. Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs.
Well there are a couple of rabbit trails I could go down with this one.
To my understanding, embryonic stems cells come from leftover fertilized eggs from invitro etc not from aborted pregnancies but it could include both, I am not sure. One of the future treatments, for curing nongenetic problems(ie spinal cord, organ damage) is to create and an embyro(then stem cells) with your own DNA(clone). I don't think that would work with probems such as alzheimer's unless the embyro's DNA is changed to remove that problem. I think that is going to be an even bigger argument than the current one, but is technically no different that the current one.
To make a statement about the flushing of embryos down the drain. Most leftover embryos are kept in cryo for future pregnancies but I am not sure how long. My mom is the state director of an adoption agency(make of that what you want). She said that they have started to do embryo adoptions for couples who can't get pregnant because of fertility, not incubation problems. So know that some embryos are not getting flush down the drain and to ME that is a good thing.
"If you like Battlestar Galactica, you're probably a huge nerd." -Stephen Colbert
Well, still, using embryonic cells is pretty sick, unethical
I guess you're not an organ donor, either, huh? And, if you were dying of, say, liver cancer, you'd turn down a chance to live our your life with a donated organ? Why? Because it's "sick" to use something that's beyond the use of a dead body?
We sure wouldn't want people living longer, healthier, more productive lives if it means burying someone with a pound less of their internal tissue, now would we?
Now, normally I'd stop right there, presumingi that no one could be so obtuse as to not see how this is exactly the same situation as the stem cells from an about-to-be-discarded surplus IVF blastocyst, or the recovered cells from a failed fetus, or the recovered cells from a pregnancy that was aborted, and was going to be aborted anyway. People like you, that would rather use that tissue for fertalizer in a landfill than save some poor brain-injured kid's life are (well, to use your words) "sick" and "unethical" to a nauseating degree.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
> just so they can see Christopher Reeve ride a polo pony again.
i sincerely hope that you realize the magnitude of a spinal cord injury. let's see how fun life is when you can't control your own bodily functions.
The truth is closer to:
There is a ban on performing embryonic stem cell research (outside of the few established stem cell lines, most of which are contaminated or otherwise unviable) in a research facility which uses federal funds for any research.
That is where the problem lies. There are plenty of research facilities in the United States, both public and private, willing to do embryonic stem cell research using non-public (ie, non-federal) funding, but because they already do research in other areas (not even related to stem cell research) using federal, public funds, they have been told that if they pursue embryonic stem cell research (outside of those established lines), even with private funding, that the federal funding to their other research projects would be in jeopardy and be cut off.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Lemme tell ya, it'll take a lot more than stem cells to let Christopher Reeve ride a polo pony at this point.
Though I imagine duct tape would do it.