Slashdot Mirror
Vein Grown From Her Own Stem Cells Saves 10-Year-Old
An anonymous reader writes in with a story about a milestone in stem cell medicine. "A ten year old girl became the first person in the world to get a major blood vessel replaced by one grown using her own stem cells. The 10-year-old from Sweden had a blockage of a vein from her liver. The doctors decided to give her a new vein instead of a liver transplant or giving her a vein from her own body, Associated Press reported. The team from University of Gothenburg first took 9 cm vein segment from a dead man and stripped all living cells from it, leaving behind only a protein structure. They later reconstructed the vein by using cells from the girl's own bone marrow. The new graft was then put in the girl's body two weeks later."
Since the donor vessel was stripped down to nothing but a protien structure is there any reason a non-human vein couldn't be donated? Cattle are slaughtered in bulk for instance, I don't see why a protien structure from one of those couldn't be used.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
What does it matter? There are plenty of dead people around.
I am more interested in the fact that her cells were harvested from her bone marrow, rather than gathered from umbilical cord blood and cryogenically stored at several thousand dollars a pop.
Although it can't be a good news article for their business, it gives the rest of us oldies a bit more hope that we can benefit from stem cells.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Agreed, but not all of them consent to donate.
Cattle don't get a say in the matter. If we start doing this in bulk we would be better off finding commonly slaughtered animals that can provide the structure rather than consenting humans to meet demand. Granted, even if we don't go the animal route the percentage of compatible donors just skyrocketed for those that can wait a while for an organ - such as my own cousin who is awaiting a heart.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
"I believe that children are our future..unless we stop them now." -- Homer Simpson.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Prof. Hubert J. Farnsworth: Come on, stem cells, work your astounding scientific nonsense!
Philip J. Fry: Fetal stem cells? Aren't those controversial?
Prof. Hubert J. Farnsworth: In your time, yes. But nowadays... shut up! Besides, these are adult stem cells, harvested from healthy adults whom I've killed for their stem cells.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Cows would have to be slaughtered in a way to save a certain vein for a procedure like this. Current slaughterhouse practices would not lead to much useable matter for medical procedures like this. It's do-able, but would take some changes. That's assuming the cow vein is indeed compatible.
Since the donor vessel was stripped down to nothing but a protien structure is there any reason a non-human vein couldn't be donated?
I know they use animal tissues as scaffolds for some treatments. I was recently reading about the use of stripped extracellular matrix from pigs bladders for treatment on both horses and people.
http://www.acell.com/acell-products.html
Maybe she was lactose intolerant. :-)
I see three possible reasons why this was not done:
1. The vein needs to be a certain shape, and cow veins are shaped incorrectly.
2. The protein structure of cow veins is different somehow.
3. D'oh!
My guess, though, is that this is an experimental process and they went with a tissue type match to reduce the possibility of rejection. Trans-species transplants just adds way too many variables.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
This is just the kind of awful socialism that happens when the government funds scientific research.
We need more expensive and less effective procedures which ensure a steady flow of income from the patient.
The free market would have done a much better job.
It's actually not as amazing as it seems... adult stem cells* have been used quite extensively, and for quite awhile. It also has the added advantage of compatibility.
* yes she's a kid, but they still call 'em adult cells, to distinguish them from the embryonic ones.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Then there will be ranchers who make money slaughtering the animal to recover the vein as well as sell the meat.
However, I think it would be more likely that Pigs would be genetically altered to have the correct kind of vein.
Eventually the protein structure will just be grown or printed on demand
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This article touches on that in the last paragraph. In a nutshell: maybe. This is pioneering work so there are a lot of things that need to be evaluated.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
2. The protein structure of cow veins is different somehow.
Subtle inter-specie difference in the amino acid sequence (and more rarely protein folding) might be recognised by the child's immune system as "foreign" and rejected.
The best long term solution would be to custom 3D-print the protein structure. But that would require technology which is not available/developed under the time constrains of saving this specific child's life. Thus, the "dead body" option was picked up for being quickly usable.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Nor a master of basic written English.
Thank you for your contribution. This thread would have suffered for lack of your pedantry despite the clear communication that the GP made.
The structure of the vein isn't a major issue in this particular case- the procedure was a bypass, so all that was needed was a tube of tissue that could take blood from one vein to another. This procedure, called a meso Rex bypass, has been done with a variety of vein sources already. The cadaver donor vein used here was an iliac vein, which normally returns blood from the legs. Issues of structure or size do come into play when other types of grafts or transplants are considered, but I think, as other comments have noted, that in this case generation of the vein from stem cells was done for immunological reasons, as even decellularized animal tissue can provoke an immune response.
"FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
Who would not consent to be an organ donor? I'm curious. I want to know what kind of person says, "No, I don't want any of my parts used to save anyone's life after I die."
Is it a superstitious thing or something? I'm not joking or trying to provoke. I cannot grasp not being willing to donate one's organs after death.
You are welcome on my lawn.
There's a ranch in California that provides medical grade collagen from their cattle. Their "slaughterhouse" is comparable with a high-end operating room. They need to take extreme precautions in raising the cattle to produce the absolutely best product possible - totally organic, no contact with cattle not under the control of the ranch (they actually lease all surrounding lands and leave them unused to ensure that), etc. It's very expensive to raise cattle this way. But it is very lucrative. Lucrative enough that the meat is a by-product and only adds marginally to the bottom line. I imagine if this were to become common place, similar ranches could be set up. Granted, it moves away from the local slaughterhouse diverting part of their cull, but it's do-able.
another Slashdot article not about embryonic stem cells where the masses get confused and show their ignorance and anti-American prejudice...
If god wanted this child to live he wouldn't have created stem cells and blessed the doctors with the knowledge to perform the procedure.
(I'm a liver transplant surgeon).
They could have done this procedure with cadaver iliac vein without the fancy bioprocessing, without immunosuppression. I've done that operation. Allograft vessels and other tissue grafts have been available for years. It's an interesting idea to see if the autologous endothelial cells improve patency, but the procedure itself is nothing remotely newsworthy. I can't believe Lancet accepted the statement that this processing avoided the need for liver transplantation.
Also, decellularized bovine carotid grafts have also been used in human surgery for many years, usually for dialysis access surgery. The trade name is Artegraft, and I think they are marketed by Johnson and Johnson, but not sure. I don't know if bovine carotid has ever been used for a meso-rex shunt (what this kid had - an uncommon procedure), but they have been used many thousands of times for other vascular surgery.
About a few hundred reasons, the most important of which are
1. the much larger likelihood of an immune reaction to the collagen-elastin matrix. Human collagen =! Cattle collagen , mainly in terms of glycosylation etc.
2. Large blood vessels of the body have some degree of specialization, they aren't just pipes. Finding an anatomically compatible cattle vein can be a problem, what with cattle liver being a completely different shape and all that.
3. As a matter of principle, you really don't want to expose cattle pathogens deep into the human peritoneum, it only encourages them to jump species. and before you say Sterilization, remember that is only a probabilistic process which you can't do too much of non-destructively.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
"Is it necessary the vien come from a dead human?"
Well, not necessary, but a live human is hard to hold down when you try to cut away a piece of their major blood vessels.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.