“Latest Stem Cells News”

Sierra Fedelem may look like any other 20-month-old, but her parents are doing everything they can to make sure her life is just like that of any other healthy human being.
Stem cell research has stirred quite the controversy in the United States, and though the current administration’s recent policy reversal on the issue could open the markets to treatments and commercialization, it’s still an option unavailable for American patients, like Sierra, unless they’re willing to travel across the world.

“The first time the neurologist said, ‘No, you don’t realize it, she’s never going to be able to walk, talk and see, and she’s always going to be at the mental level of a 4-month-old’,” Rosetta Fedelem said. “We were just shocked.”
The Fedelems hadn’t realized the extent of the brain damage Sierra suffered during birth.

“We said ‘We’re not going to stop, we’re going to start doing as much as you can for her’,” Rosetta said. “So we started praying and researching.”
Their research landed them in China, where Sierra received several treatments of adult stem cells extracted from somebody else’s umbilical cord. Adult stem cells differ from embryonic stem cells, in that they can be retrieved from adult organs or tissue.

While leading U.S. experts say the possibilities are far-reaching, the quality of overseas studies remains uncertain.
“It’s very hard to tell which is a good place, and which is not,” Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine Institute for Regenerative Medicine Director Dr. Darwin Prockup said. “But of course, patients get to be desperate, and you can’t blame them for trying.”

Dr. Prockup said better adult stem cell treatments in the United States are coming. In March, President Barack Obama signed an executive order, reversing Bush administration policy, to allow scientists to continue stem cell research on ongoing projects. The results of the research will determine when the United States will open its doors to treatment.
“Of course there’s always danger with any therapy, so you have to be very careful, there’s always a risk-benefit you have to weigh carefully,” Prockup said. “That’s done in good medical centers. That’s why we’re a little slower.”

The Fedelems said they did weigh the pros and cons.
“I don’t accept new things easily, but when there’s enough evidence of results, I’m willing to try them,” Jason said. “And that’s exactly what happened here.”

In the three weeks they’ve been back from China, Sierra can sit up on her own for a few seconds, do an army crawl, and stand up for more than twice the amount of time she could before. Plus, her parents say she’s more alert and vocal.
Rosetta and Jason say they want Sierra to be able to walk, talk and see.

“Now we don’t know exactly which of those goals she’ll reach,” Rosetta said. “Our goal is, as parents, to push her to achieve her greatest potential, whatever that is. We’ll love her no matter what.”
The Fedelems said they spent more than$23,000 on treatments in China, but they raised $45,000. The rest of the funds went to a hyperbaric chamber, and other treatments Sierra will receive in Florida in two weeks.

To learn more about Sierra and how you can donate to help the family with medical expenses visit SightForSierra.com.
Dr. Prockup said the institute will be working on four clinical trials. By the end of the year he expects they’ll begin one with adult stem cell research for treatment on knee cartilage repair. The institute also plans to conduct stem cell research on diabetes, heart disease and strokes.

from News 8 Austin

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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.

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I just had a birthday, and to honor such occasions, my sister always gives me silver. Not just any silver: It’s our parents’ simple wedding flatware pattern, which Margaret collects for me, one piece at a time. Over the years that the slender boxes have appeared, I’ve wondered if any of it is from the full service for 12 that I pulled in a suitcase through Manhattan’s Diamond District and sold one dreadful day 25 years ago.

It had been my assignment to sell it —- that, and a ring of Margaret’s, one of mine and, right off our mother’s finger, her engagement ring and platinum wedding band. The sum received was probably a quarter of their monetary worth, and nothing near their emotional value, but it financed two more weeks of home care for our mother, an Alzheimer’s patient. After five years of caring for her at home, we had run through the family savings.

It was a few years before the sale of the silver that I first wrote about us, in a 1983 magazine article that, impossible as it may seem now, introduced Alzheimer’s disease to millions of people who didn’t know what it was, including the seasoned magazine editor to whom I first pitched the story. Last Sunday, HBO began a three-night series, produced by California’s first lady, Maria Shriver, about a disease that now needs no introduction.

When I first wrote about Alzheimer’s, I searched out some of the best minds of the time, including Lewis Thomas, the great science writer, former dean of Yale Medical School and then-chancellor of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He called Alzheimer’s disease “the disease of the century” because, he said, “of all the health problems in the 20th century, this one is the worst.”

That quote got people’s attention, as did the words “angry, incompetent, hostile and incontinent,” which is how I described my mother. She was then 51, two years younger than I am now. I exposed her for who she had become in exchange for the attention I hoped the article might bring for her disease.

In years that followed, congressional hearings were held, state task forces were convened and city committees were formed. Research dollars were allotted as well. But those were the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was president, and despite the fact that embryonic stem cell research had been conducted in the U.S. since the middle of the 20th century, contributing to such wonders as vaccines for both rubella and polio, it was rebranded and became strongly associated with abortion. In the years that followed, despite the well-known fact that stem cell research was the most promising path to finding cures for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and other diseases, this country allowed the personal beliefs of the anti-abortion forces to become public policy. And that lasted a very long time.

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After US President Barack Obama opened up to embryonic stem cell research, “we will have an America that will begin to run ,and an Italy that risks becoming a parasite,” were the fears expressed by pharmacologist Elena Cattaneo, director of the stem cell research center of the University of Milan.

Obama’s attitude, observed the Italian researcher today during a meeting in Milan, “is very positive. He has opened the door to research,” she said to Adnkronos Salute, “but with caution, without crying miracle. With the idea that perhaps tomorrow future generations will be able to benefit from the results that will be obtained.”

The hope, said Cattaneo, is that these choices “will mark an opening to research in general, not only for embryonic stem cells. He has recognized their strength.” From a practical standpoint now “in the US, much more investment will be available, studies will be more daring to accept intellectual and experimental challenges, while Italy risks remaining behind. Unless we will be able to benefit from those studies, as long as we are capable of doing so.”

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Steve Jones

We have been told for almost a decade that stem cells are the future of medicine: that these tiny clumps of tissue could become a biological “repair kit”, able to regenerate or heal almost any part of the body. But amid all the prophecies of patches for damaged hearts, new nerve cells for spinal injuries or stroke victims, and insulin-producing cells for diabetics, few people predicted that it would be British-based scientists who would be leading the way in mapping out this new terrain.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph last week, Professor Steve Jones bemoaned the failure of genetic research to deliver on its promises. Yet no such complaint could be made about stem cells, the “prototype” cells that are capable of growing into any of the 300 different kinds of cell in the body. As they make the leap from the lab to the clinic, new breakthroughs and developments are emerging from British universities on an almost weekly basis. Scientists, normally hesitant to overstate the significance of any work, are starting to talk about a new era of medicine.

“The technology has come of age a lot faster than people expected,” says Professor Pete Coffey of University College London. “We all saw this as a technology that had potential for clinical application, but it has gone very quickly down that route.”

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OKLAHOMA CITY — The debate over stem cell research stirs up deeply held religious, moral and ethical views.
But some aren’t sure what a possible ban or veto will mean for Oklahoma.
Cells tinier than a pin head have some asking larger-than-life questions.

House Bill 1326 would criminalize research that would destroy or cause substantial risk to a human embryo.
The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation reports this type of research isn’t even happening in the state right now.

The foundation is doing research on adult stem cells but not embryonic.
But its workers say no one knows what the medical landscape will look like in five or 10 years. And they don’t believe research should be cut off if it could lead to life-saving innovations in the future.

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