Skin Stem Cells Used to Mend Spines of Rats

The Toronto Star reports researchers have used adult skin stem cells to heal spinal cord injuries in rats. "Injured rats injected with skin-derived stem cells regained mobility and had better walking co-ordination, according to the study published yesterday in the Journal of Neuroscience. The skin-derived stem cells, injected directly into the injured rats' spinal cords, were able to survive in their new location and set off a flurry of activity, helping to heal the cavity in the cord."

Comments

Re:Lab Rats

[iamacat]

Indicating that we need an informed human volunteer program. We ask people to risk their lives at war in another country, surely taking some risks to help millions in your own country is not out of the question? I would think risky experiments would be limited to those who stand to benefit from them or terminally ill who want to end their life on a meaningful note.

OK I'm confused.

[sakusha]

This makes no sense to me. I remember a long time ago (maybe 1976) when I was a pre-med student in college, I got a part time job at the hospital's Anaesthesiology Lab. Some of the doctors were always doing research on lab rats, it was my job to assist them (mostly doing computer data analysis). One day I saw a doctor doing some particularly nasty stuff to some rats, I asked him what he was doing. He said he was severing their spinal cords. I asked him why he was doing that. He told me that rats have a unique ability to partially repair their spinal cord even if it was completely severed. Then he showed me how he did it (not that I really wanted to see it). He made a little slice, a little snip, and crudely sewed the rat back up. I asked him why he didn't put some antibiotics in the wound or anything. He said, "well they're just rats." Sheesh. That was about the time I decided I didn't want to be a doctor.

So anyway, I was under the impression that rats already had the ability to repair their spinal cord even without the use of stem cells. Perhaps I've mis-remembered what the doctor/researcher said, does anyone know the details?

Re:OK I'm confused.

[Colin Smith]

http://www.rds-online.org.uk/pages/page.asp?i_Page ID=145&i_ToolbarID=3

Apparently if the severance is incomplete they can regrow nerve fibres.

I thought humans could too though. I thought it was the scarring on the ends of the nerve fibres which prevented regrowth. My father severed the nerve in a finger, after several years it regrew and he could feel things again.

Re:OK I'm confused.

[TomorrowPlusX]

I'm not a neuroscientist -- but my girlfriend is. And I've watched her do the exact operation you described for the purpose of making illustrations for her papers ( I'm a graphic designer ). It was Gruesome. Anyway, I don't think it's that rats can heal their spinal cords. They can't. But, like us, they can heal damaged spinal cords up to a particular level of trauma, and since rats are the ubiquitous model for this reasearch, that level of trauma is reasonably well-understood.

So, a lot of this spinal work is done at that approximate trauma level; then when the rats are at different levels of healing they're "sacrificed" ( or "sacked", for short ) and then analysis of the cells at the damage point is done to better understand why that particular trauma level exists, such that ways can be determined to push it farther.

Re:Lab Rats

[milamber3]

This already happens for quite a few diseases. Look at Stem Cells Inc. and their work with Batten's Disease. These children are going to die if nothing is done so they are doing approved trial with them. The problem with using the people who are most ill is that sometimes they die before you get all the information you need from the trial. Trials are expensive and time consuming already so that's a pretty big negative to overcome.

Re:Lab Rats

[rucs_hack]

terminally ill who want to end their life on a meaningful note

They already do that. I had a friend who was diagnosed with a very nasty cancer that killed him in four months. Unfortunately his 'doctors' convinced him to allow them to test a drug on him. It helped him not a jot, a fact that they alluded to being likely (being of medical background I could read between the lines of what he was told), but never quite managed to explain clearly for him, and made him puke constantly. I did try to convince him to not take part, but they'd got him on the 'for the good of other people' thing. His was not the first case I encountered where this had occured, just the closest to me.

Terminally ill people make bad subjects. For one thing they're already dying, so your looking at a system in a failure condition, not much useful general data to be had there, and we are, after all, dealing with a person who may want to be doing other stuff in their last bit of time alive. They are also prone to being fragile of mind (not always, but it can happen in those who suddenly find they are dying young), so susceptible to being talked into things not in their best interests.

I'm against it, you may have gathered. Personally I think we should be growing brainless human bodies (as in never had a brain, never alive without external help), and test on them instead. Heck, we might even be able to cuts bits off them for people to use.

Re:Lab Rats

[notclevernickname]

Considering that in the U.S. alone, nearly two-thirds of all capital convictions are overturned, I don't think that is a very good idea. Also, there are about 3,000 inmates on death row right now, I'm pretty sure thats not enough for all of the medical procedures that are being developed today.