“Latest Stem Cells News”

A young woman is back home after a desperate journey to China for experimental stem cell treatment to heal her brain.

It wasn’t a disease or a genetic defect that led to her condition. Instead, Jackie Murphree, 22, went into a coma and woke up unresponsive and in need of wheelchair after a drunk driver struck her car.
The Decatur High honor student turned Aggie was leaving for work one morning two years ago when the accident occurred. The driver got probation.

In the latest on her slow and painful journey to find the person she used to be, Jackie went to China for five weeks. Doctors injected her own stem cells into her spinal cord in an attempt to heal her brain. She returned to North Texas Wednesday.
Patrick Murphree, her father, has been in the forefront of the battle, leading the quest to find help for his daughter. In therapy each day, he said he hopes each small response is a sign that his daughter is stepping closer to who she was before the crash.

“When she’s having a bad day, and she’s obviously in pain, I get real mad that she’s having to go through this,” he said.
Her physical therapist, Merley Vela, said she has seen through the way Jackie holds her head up or leans on her arm that there are improvements.

“Before she could not hold her head up,” Vela said. “Before she did not react at all. But now she gets angry. You can see her facial expression when she’s mad.”
Murphree quit his job to care for his daughter while Jackie’s mom supports the family.

“This is my job,” he said. “This is what I do. I don’t do anything else. It’s one of those things where we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but it doesn’t change what I do today.”
But her parents haven’t been the only one supporting Jackie’s journey. Hundreds of neighbors in Decatur raised more than $30,000 for experimental treatment in China that is not available in the Unites States.

“We don’t know if she’s on one of her peaks, or it’s the result of what happened,” Murphree said of watching his daughter over the last week react more to conversation.
Not expecting an overnight miracle, Jackie’s family has been cherishing the small signs.

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Ten years ago, Leah Potts was a patient at Craig Hospital, after a skiing accident that broke her neck and damaged her spinal cord. The first doctors she saw warned her she might never walk again.

Today, Potts teaches Spinning, the popular and intense indoor group bicycling class. The Aspen resident can walk (with a cane). She skis again (with outriggers). And she blogs about her progress at leahpotts.com.

“I remember lying there in bed at the beginning,” she said. “I remember lying there thinking, ‘OK, this doesn’t sound too good. I have two choices: Lie here and cry about it, or get up and do something about it.’ I was 23 years old. I’d just graduated from college. I felt like my life was just beginning.”

When she left Craig Hospital after three months, Potts relied on a walker or a wheelchair to get around. Using the walker was exhausting. It took all her energy to move from the front door to her living-room sofa. She had to rest before getting up again to go to the next room.

Reclaiming her body became Potts’ full-time job. She spent at least three hours a day in rehabilitation treatment, sticking to a grueling schedule that later cost her her short marriage to Dan Roland.

Researchers in the United States are worried about the fact that there could be an increase in tourism to countries that “assure cures for serious illnesses like Alzheimer’s or multiple sclerosis with the use of stem cells”. From the Ukraine to Mexico, some doctors have said that they have miraculous cures, often using patients recruited on the Internet, without sufficient scientific evidence of their effects.

Jessica Grimm, a 27 year-old quadriplegic traveled from Texas to Costa Rica to try a controversial stem cell cure, which is not yet allowed in the United States.