“Latest Stem Cells News”

Don’t look for this just yet at your neighborhood clinic, but Minnesota scientists are pushing stem cell therapies into new frontiers — into territory that is so open that doctors and regulators still are shaping practices and policies as they go along.

In one breakthrough, researchers at Mayo Clinic in Rochester obtained stem cells derived from the bone marrow of heart disease patients and guided the cells to help heal, repair and regenerate damaged heart tissue. This is “landmark work,” said an editorial accompanying their research report in Monday’s Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

And last week, University of Minnesota researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that they had for the first time used stem cells from bone marrow to help children who suffer from a rare, fatal skin disease.

While these advances are significant, they also show why we have to be patient about waiting for stem cells to deliver their seemingly magical healing power for every day therapy. That has been especially true while ethical, religious and political concerns held up research on stem cells derived from early embryos.

But even with so-called adult stem cells (those not from early embryos), it takes years of painstaking work to isolate just the right cells and then concoct cultures that will not only nurture them in the laboratory but also coax them to perform new functions.

The subject of producing artificial blood from stem cells has become a hot topic in Italy. “Italy is close to reaching the same objective announced by British researchers, on a similar timeframe,” therefore possibly in three years, “but using adult stem cells. Certainly, it is one thing to say that in three years we will begin the experimental phase, it’s another thing to speak about industrial production. It needs to be specified that the procedure to produce artificial blood is very expensive. Therefore this would be a complementary solution, which will not replace donations,” Said Welfare Undersecretary Ferruccio Fazio, shortly after an announcement of a British study, during a meeting on blood transfusion by the Health Observatory in Rome.

“I would like to calm the enthusiasm after the announcement of the British study,” said Fazio. “There are Italian research groups that are doing very advanced projects on adult stem cells to produce artificial blood. The Italian way was also chosen by the US Armed Forces,” he specified. “We are working on adult stem cells also for long-term sustainability. There is also a collaboration in place between the Mayo Clinic in America and researchers of the Superior Institute of Health (ISS),” he added. “Therefore Italy is not behind in this sector. “This is a very expensive procedure though, which will never substitute donation,” confirmed Fazio.

Furthermore, the upcoming conference of the federal government and the regions should examine a provision “that proposes financing in all of the Italian regions for umbilical cord biobanks starting in 2009. This is something,” pointed out Fazio, “that will aid in research on blood from adult stem cells”. While labs in Italy have worked for years, Giuliano Graziani, the director of the national blood centre pointed out that “the production of artificial plasma will be extremely expensive. We are not disputing the importance of donating blood. Research like the British study is ongoing throughout the world. There are important studies,” he said, “whose results are not right around the corner, and which will never replace the key role of donations”.

“In addition to unacceptable ethical implications, this research has not demonstrated anything yet,” commented geneticist Bruno Dallapiccola regarding the announcement of several British researchers, published recently on the online edition of the Independent regarding the possibility of producing blood by using embryonic stem cells.

“There are no official results yet,” said the scientist in an interview with Vatican Radio, “and none of this research has been transferred to patients. Then,” he added, “rather than reading these results in the Independent, it would be appropriate to see them published in a scientific journal with critical revisers able to judge their basis.”

In the meanwhile, the geneticists said that embryonic stem cell research aimed at curing diseases like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s “have not given any results yet”. A group of British researchers said that they will be able to obtain, within three years, an unlimited quantity of red blood cells from unused human embryos.

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.