“Latest Stem Cells News”

Adult stem cell research has produced treatments for 73 different conditions, while embryonic stem cell research has not produced a single therapy or helped a single patient. But those facts were conveniently omitted from a recent column advocating increased taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research (“Stem cell opportunity,” Commentary, Feb. 20).
The column also neglected to mention the biggest advance in stem cell research in the last decade – the creation of induced pluripotent stem cells.
That development allows researchers to reprogram adult stem cells to behave like embryonic stem cells without destroying human embryos. It was hailed by the journal Science as the scientific breakthrough of 2008 and trumpeted on a recent Time magazine cover.

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According to the European Patent Office, there will be no patents in Europe for embryonic stem cells. The board decided to fully uphold a sentence from June by a select committee regarding a request for a patent made by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, based at the University where James Thompson, the scientist who discovered stem cells, works. “European patent law prohibits the application of patents to stem cell cultures whose preparation necessarily implicates the destruction of human embryos.”

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First and foremost, the new international guidelines on stem cells, with four Italians among the authors, need to be clear, eliminating false illusions, incredible exaggerations, and confusion due to excess emphasis placed on the therapeutic properties of adult stem cells compared to embryonic stem cells.
The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) has decided to impart some order in a field of research which, for various reasons, is growingly involved in issues that have little to do with research.

“Regulation is necessary,” according to the Society, commenting about studies that risk creating exaggerated controversy or omitting risks regarding stem cell therapy. “Over 30 researchers from some of the most prestigious centers in the world signed the guidelines, which were published yesterday in Cell Stem Cell magazine. Michele De Luca, the director of the Center of Regenerative Medicine of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, said, “Guidelines are important because the rules that western countries impose on this type of research are not always observed in developing countries like China, India, Korea. De Luca was one of the Italian authors of the guidelines along with Elena Cattaneo of the University of Milan, Giulio Cossu of the Department of Biotechnology (DIBIT) of San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, and Marina Cavazzana Calvo, of the University of Paris.

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Apparently it looks like a simple tea bag but in reality it’s a genetically engineered concentrate able to completely revolutionize treatments for stroke patients. A special little bag called ‘CellBeads’ contains tiny capsules, each containing about 1 million stem cells. Thanks to genetic engineering techniques, stem cells taken from the bone marrow are transformed into a drug that protects brain cells from dying. This allows the cells to be rejuvenated and repair damage caused by the stroke. The stem cells are encapsulated to ‘fool’ the immune system, avoiding a rejection by the body. ‘CellBeads’ were developed by a group of British scientists from the Biocompatibles International Company, and are about 2cm, which allows them to be easily removed.

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Cellular therapy with stem cells is revolutionizing the focus of treatment of many serious diseases. Replacing the cells of damaged tissue with other new cells from the same patient is already a reality. This is the basis of cellular therapy and regenerative medicine, the latest great advance in biomedicine.

In this line, Hospital Clínic, Barcelona is exploring an innovative cellular therapy that uses stem cells to treat Crohn’s disease, a chronic genetic disease that affects 1% of the population in Spain and which has considerable impact on the quality of life of the patients. The procedure is based on an autologous bone-marrow transplant (when patients receive a transplant of their own stem cells) and now constitutes a treatment option to cure an intestinal disease that sometimes does not successfully respond to drugs and requires highly complex surgery that does not provide a cure.

With this therapy, in an average follow-up period of 6 years, 80% of transplant patients are in a phase of total remission of the disease and the remaining 20% have shown considerable improvement following the transplant, and are now responding favorably to drugs.

Dr. Julián Panés and Dr. Elena Ricart over the Gastroenterology Department of Hospital Clínic, Barcelona are the driving force behind this therapy in Spain and began to implement regenerative cellular therapy in patients with Crohn’s disease in August 2008. To date, a total of 6 patients are benefiting from this new treatment, of whom 3 have already completed the process and are in the follow-up face, and a further 3 are at different stages of therapy. The transplant requires several weeks of admission to hospital before patients receive their own cells.

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Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday admonished visiting US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic who advocates abortion rights, that “all Catholics” should uphold the Church’s teachings on life.
Benedict “took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death,” the Vatican said in a statement.

These “enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists as well as those responsible for the common good of society to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development,” the statement said.

Pelosi, the highest-ranking US official to see the pope since President Barack Obama took office last month, describes herself as an “ardent” Catholic while advocating reproductive rights.
The top lawmaker drew fire from the US Catholic Church last August after she appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” when, responding to a question about when human life begins from anchor Tom Brokaw, she said: “The doctors of the Church have not been able to make that definition… We don’t know.”

She added: “The point is, is that it shouldn’t have an impact on the woman’s right to choose.”
Cardinal Edward Egan of New York expressed “shock” over the comments, saying, “What the speaker had to say about theologians and their positions regarding abortion was not only misinformed; it was also, and especially, utterly incredible in this day and age.”

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