“Latest Stem Cells News”

In a bold move that is sure to shake the foundations of the United States FDA, a group of American doctors have published a set of strict clinical guidelines that will allow US doctors to treat patients with their own Adult Stem Cells.

Your Own Stem Cells Are Not a Drug

This move by the American Stem Cell Therapy Association comes in response to the FDA’s position that a person’s own stem cells should be classified as a drug, thus subject to the exact same set of standards that a drug like Viagra or Lipitor or Vioxx would be examined under.

However, these US doctors are correct in believing that adult stem cell therapy with the patient’s own cells is governed under the practice of medicine, not under drug production guidelines.

From the stem cell press release:

Adult stem cells can be processed with the same techniques commonly used in existing in-vitro fertilization (IVF) labs. “Like the human cells and tissue used in IVF, adult stem cells are not drugs,” stated Christopher J. Centeno, M.D., a physician who worked on the guidelines and whose medical practice includes the use of the Regenexx procedure, which uses patients own stem cells to treat orthopedic conditions.

Slowing Progress, Costing Lives- the US FDA at Work

“Making the stem cells in your own body a drug won’t make them safer, will dramatically reduce availability of treatment, and will increase bureaucratic red tape.” stated Dr. Centeno.

Dr. Centeno is absolutely right.  These are your own cells and having the FDA regulate your own body won’t be helping anybody as there is no downside to having your own stem cells implanted.

Let me repeat that- there is no downside to having your own Adult Stem Cells implanted. Either they will help you or they won’t (no effect).  This has been proven in thousands of studies.

Your own stem cells should be an extra tool your doctor should be able to use to help you.  No, adult stem cells are not a cure yet, but they do help in the majority of cases.

Again, your own stem cells should be a tool in your responsible doctor’s tool kit that may or may not be able to help, but should be made available to you as there is no downside.  What does the patient have to lose?  A man in end stage heart failure about to die- give him his own stem cells, they should help. He may not be beating Husain Bolt in a 100 meter sprint, but should improve.  A spinal cord injury victim, give him his own stem cells, they should help.  He/she may not be walking, but it could be beneficial in some ways.  A diabetic, give him his own stem cells- they should improve his insulin levels. And if your own stem cells don’t help- there is no harm done- thousands of studies have proven this.

And what if your own Adult Stem Cells work only 5% of the time for a particular lethal disease and your doctor wants to try to save your life? Hey! It will save 5% more than zero. With no downside, why not? And if the FDA has its way, that 5% will be 0. It is up to all of us to make a stand. And these clinical guidelines are the first step.

If you are a patient of any kind and reading this, I urge you to go to Safe Stem Cells Now, a patient run organization demanding the use of their own stem cells.

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Not all stem cells are ‘good’ at aiding the heart in repairing itself after a heart attack. Apparently, ‘baby cells’ present in human fat are the best equipped to perform this task and could be used in human testing by the end of 2009. “ We have seen that a simple stem cell transplant into a heart after a heart-attack is not sufficient. There are different types of stem cells that are better adapted to aiding the heart in the healing process. Instead of hematopoietic stem cells used in initial studies, mesenchymal stem cells are now being used.

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A biodegradable tissue to repair hearts after a heart attacks or to cure congenital malformations. A tissue that acts like a porous, accordion-like medium onto which cardiac stem cells are ‘implanted’ has been created by scientists from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston (MIT). This “bioscaffolding” integrates perfectly with cardiac tissue and creates a biological “band-aid” that is slowly reabsorbed and repairs cardiac muscle.

Compared to similar previous attempts, explained George Engelmayr in “Nature Materials” magazine, the advantage of the “bioscaffolding” is that it faithfully mirrors cardiac tissue structurally and mechanically, and therefore integrates well with it. Cardiac cells all have a certain orientation that allows them to transmit an electrical impulse that makes the heart beat.

The experts, using a laser similar to the kind used to cure short-sightedness, constructed this tissue “scaffolding” and then “implanted” neonatal cardiac cells from mice into it. They then electrically stimulated the tissue just like in the heart, and the cells oriented in the same direction, just as they do in the human body. “We have followed nature’s lessons as closely as possible and have created tissue very similar to the body’s own tissue, and therefore something truly useful for future therapeutic applications.”

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A group of British doctors are preparing for human clinical trials that will take a person’s bone marrow stem cells, transform them into heart stem cells and inject them into the heart, where they can go to work repairing damage.

“Placing heart stem cells into the heart to repair has a very good chance of working; because the stem cells are the patient’s own there are no problems with rejection,” said Professor Sian Harding, of Imperial College London.

The British researchers plan to use a technique that was pioneered at the Mayo Clinic. They will remove 40 milliliters of bone marrow from a patient and then grow heart stem cells from them through the use of growth factors. Once injected back into the heart, doctors say they can expect a physical improvement in the patient in as little as two weeks.

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Those suffering from a damaged heart can be treated with their own heart cells. According to a recent research, heart stem cells from children with congenital heart disease can rebuild the damaged heart in the laboratory. The findings apparently have great significance in the health zone.

While conducting the research, cells were achieved from patients ranging in age from a few days after birth to 13 years. These patients were previously subjected to routine congenital cardiac surgery. The number of heart stem cells appears greatest in neonates, that reduce with progression in age. Majority of the stem cells can be possibly found in the upper right chamber of the heart, or the right atrium. The cardiac stem cells seem to be functional and are capable to repair the damaged heart.

“Due to the advances in surgical and medical therapies, many children born with cardiomyopathy or other congenital heart defects are living longer but may eventually succumb to heart failure. This project has generated important pre-clinical laboratory data showing that we may be able to use the patient’s own heart stem cells to rebuild their hearts, allowing these children to potentially live longer and have more productive lives,” shared Sunjay Kaushal, MD, PhD, surgeon in the Division of Cardiovascular Thoracic Surgery at Children’s Memorial Hospital and assistant professor of surgery at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, lead author of the research.

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A University of Bristol team extracted stem cells from the veins, then used them to stimulate new blood vessel growth in mice, Circulation reports.

The researchers say their findings could bring treatments to repair damaged heart muscle one step closer.

However, a stem cell expert warned that they remained some years away.

Stem cells are attractive to medical researchers because they have the ability to produce many different types of human cell, opening up the possibility of repair or renewal for tissues ravaged by disease or injury (…)

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