“Latest Stem Cells News”

Sufferers from the debilitating bowel condition Crohn’s disease may be cured using a groundbreaking stem cell treatment, according to the British doctor leading the research.

Initial findings from the world’s first controlled trial of the procedure have raised hopes that it could banish the disease’s symptoms for many years in up to half of the patients who undergo it.

The pioneering therapy involves “rebooting” the patient’s immune system, by first destroying the cells that have attacked it to cause the Crohn’s, and then replacing them.

Professor Chris Hawkey, a gastroenterologist at Nottingham University, is leading the Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation in Crohn’s Disease (Astic) trial. So far, 15 patients from six European countries, including three Britons, have taken part, though others are being recruited.

“I’m hopeful that half or more of the patients who undergo stem cell transplantation may either be cured or have a long-term remission,” said Hawkey.

Hawkey, other specialist doctors and patients involved in the trial will tomorrow meet the chancellor, Alastair Darling, to press for the NHS to offer better treatment across the UK to the estimated 60,000 people who have Crohn’s and the 140,000 who suffer from colitis.

Crohn’s is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease that causes ulceration and inflammation of the digestive tract. Existing treatments all involve drugs, which help sufferers to control their symptoms, but do not offer a cure. It wrecks lives because its embarrassing and painful symptoms – including diarrhoea, stomach pains, fatigue and weight loss – can mean that those with the most severe form of Crohn’s find it hard to go to school or college, hold down a job or plan a holiday.

The stem cell treatment, which takes two years, is very painful for patients, and involves risks including bleeding, infection and a 1%-2% chance of death. The stem cell transplantation is used to kill off the patient’s old bone marrow, which produces the harmful cells that cause the Crohn’s, and generate new cells.

from Guardian

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.”