“Latest Stem Cells News”

CHENNAI -  The country’s first public stem cell bank, which would store stem cells extracted from a newborn’s umbilical cord for common use, was inaugurated here on Thursday. The cells, which are collected from the blood from umbilical cord soon after childbirth, are preserved at -196 degrees Celsius in liquid nitrogen.

While mothers can store the blood for private use for a cost, they would be charged nothing if they donate it to the public bank. These cells are capable of developing into different kinds of cells and tissues, offering new treatment methods for serious disorders including blood cancer.

Member of parliament Kanimozhi inaugurate , a unit of Jeevan Blood Bank. “Stem cells have a shelf life of 21 years. As of now, there is 80% cure from stem cell therapy for diseases like blood cancer and Thalassemia. In the future, it may be possible to use these cells to grow damaged tissues or organs. It has a potential of curing more than 70 medical conditions,” said Dr P Srinivasan, managing trustee, Jeevan Blood Bank.

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Human adult stem cells are being used to cure cirrhosis and other serious live diseases. Another 15 people in Brazil on the liver transplant waiting list have been treated by cellular therapy with encouraging results. “We are still in a strictly experimental phase” underlined Luiz Guilherme Costa Lyra, hepatologist and coordinator of the study performed by Sao Rafael di Salvador Hospital, collaborating with San Raffaele Hospital of Milan. “We must clarify that this therapy is not available for any patient outside of the experiment, so it is useless for anyone to write us asking to get into the study.”

He continued, “Furthermore we must admit that the results are decidedly interesting and we intend to continue along this path.” The project, after having passed clinical safety and efficiency tests on animals and clinical safety tests on human beings, entered into the clinical testing phase on humans three years ago. Specialists at Sao Rafael di Salvador experimented on a group whose only hope was a liver transplant, but probably would have never received one due to the length of the waiting list. Cellular therapy allowed for a significant improvement in their conditions.

FROM ANIMALS TO MAN

The story begins just after the year 2000 with experiments on mice and rats with serious liver diseases. Milena Soares, who led this phase of experimentation said, “We worked with animals affected by serious hepatic fibrosis caused by infection, toxic substances, or alcohol (hepatic fibrosis is a condition in which healthy tissue is replaced by fibrous tissue, which causes a loss in liver function and tissue disorganization which can result in hepatic cirrhosis, editor’s note). The animals were treated with non-embryonic stem cells and responded well to the therapy, showing a significant improvement in their condition.”

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Scientific inspiration can come from anywhere — a person, an event, even an experiment gone awry. But perhaps nothing can drive innovation more powerfully than the passion born of tragedy. Or, in Douglas Melton’s case, near tragedy. The co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) is one of the leading figures in the search for cures for presently incurable diseases, and his breakthrough work is challenging many long-held beliefs about the ways biology and human development work.

But it was a very personal experience that brought Melton to stem cells, one that 17 years later he still finds difficult to discuss. When his son Sam was 6 months old, he became ill with what his parents thought was a cold. He woke up with projectile vomiting and before long began taking short, shallow breaths. After several hours, he started to turn gray, and Melton and his wife Gail brought the baby to the emergency room. For the rest of that afternoon, doctors performed test after test, trying to figure out what was wrong. “It was a horrific day,” says Melton. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2008.)

It was not until that evening that a nurse thought to dip a testing strip into Sam’s urine and they finally got a diagnosis. The boy’s body was flooded with sugar; he had Type 1 diabetes. Then, as now, the disease had no cure, and patients like Sam need to perform for themselves the duties their pancreas cannot — keeping track of how much glucose they consume and relying on an insulin pump to break down the sugars when their levels climb too high. The diagnosis changed not only Sam’s life but the lives of his parents and older sister Emma as well. Throughout Sam’s childhood, Gail would wake every few hours during the night to check his blood sugar and feed him sugar if his concentration fell too low or give him insulin if it was too high. “I thought, This is no way to live,” says Melton. “I decided I was not just going to sit around. I decided I was going to do something.”

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