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."
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
"I believe that children are our future..unless we stop them now." -- Homer Simpson.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
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?
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.
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.
(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.