Posted by Elie Dolgin

[Entry posted at 14th May 2009 05:21 PM GMT]

Over 100 years ago, a Russian histologist suggested stem cells be applied for scientific research.

They are the human body?s equivalent of a generator, as they can renew, regenerate, and replicate under the right conditions.

The apex of cellular therapy and regenerative/reparative medicine has been reborn after an 8 year moratorium that basically halted federal funding for stem cell research with most states in the U.S.

Now the NIH can award grants to scientists involved with biomedical research involving stem cell therapy through the CMS to each state in the U.S.

While never banned, stem cell research had limited funding during this time. And this was unfortunate, because there are several likely uses of stem cells.

These uses include the replacement of tissues in the human body, as well as repairing cell types that are defective.

Also, stem cells can deliver genetic therapies that are needed in certain patients.

ESCs are totiplotent if obtained from the morula which is a pre-blastocyst stage. Normally, the stem cells are acquired from the blastocyst itself.

From this source, the stem cells can be any cell in the human body except for the placenta, and are pluripotent.

Embryonic stem cells are obtained from a 4 day old embryo called a blastocyst, and are pluripotent from this source.

The blastocyst contains about 100 cells, and is not suitable at this stage for implantation into the uterine wall.

The inner core of the blastocyst has about 20 cells, and this is where stem cells are obtained.

These cells are unspecialized cells that can be developed or morphed into the over 200 cells available in the human body through differentiation, as ESCs are undifferentiated by nature.

As such, they can become any human cell, as long as they are prevented from clumping or crowding together when explanted into cultures as they are propagated. After stem cells are cultured, they are moved to what are called stem lines.

Until recently, ESCs were believed to be most beneficial instead of the adult stem cell alternative (ASC), as these stem cells are limited to application to the tissue the stem cells were obtained from only.

However ASCs (somatic stem cells) now can be coerced into differentiation through plasticity (trans-differentiation).

This likely will reduce if not eliminate those opposed to stem cell therapy because of moral and ethical reasons related to the utilization of ESCs.

Thanks to molecular biology, four transcription factors control the transfer of genetic information from DNA to RNAS to regulate gene expression. So ASCs can have the same beneficial qualities as ESCs.

In the past, viral vectors and exotic genes interfered with the purity of ASCs. Now ASCs are re-programmed using plasmids instead of viruses and oncogenes that can become detrimental for the patient treated.

So now, ASCs can safely become induced pluripotent cells with the same potential as ESCs. As a result, the ASCs are free of genetic artifacts that potentially can interfere with transgene sequences.

They are capable of, and are able to renew and reproduce with minimal effort, stem cells, under the right laboratory conditions.

Human blood can be reproduced with stem cells under the right conditions, it has been shown by researchers.

SCT can also be used to investigate disease states for better treatment options.

Disease-specific stem cell lines, which are those cells that are pluripotent and are created with the same genetic errors of certain diseases, are studied for this reason.

So there clearly is a huge potential for stem cell-based therapies. The first FDA approved clinical trial occurred early in 2009.

This human trial will involve evaluating primarily the safety of ESCs designed to be used as treatment for spinal cord injury patients. The trial was submitted by Geron Corp.

Pfizer, the largest drug company, has implemented stem cell research, as they are an asset to drug discovery by creating within the organization a regenerative medicine unit.

Other large pharma companies are implemented similar research protocols for the same reasons.

Geron Corp. in California is the world?s leading esc developer, and financed researchers at Univ. of Wisconsin, who isolated the first human esc in 1998.

Stem cell therapy potentially can cure multiple sclerosis, among other disases and those with damaged human tissue.

The therapy prevents the advancement of disease, as well as reverses the neurological dysfunctions associated with MS. Patients are injected with their own stem cells obtained from their bone marrow, which are called haemopoietic stem cells.

These particular stem cells are the origin of all blood cells. Further large clinical trials are needed to support these results. Studies have shown between 70 and 80 percent of MS patients who received stem cell therapy did not relapse afterwards.

Allogenic, or donor transplants, have a risk of graft versus host disease. Autologous, which is the patient?s own stem cells, are preferable and most beneficial.

Similar results from this autologous bone marrow transplant cellular therapy are seen with Chron?s disease as well.

During the procedure, the immune system is reset so it is not in an autoimmune state where it attacks the human body. The process lasts about 2 months, and consists of 6phases:

1. Initial chemo
2. Release of stem cells
3. Acquisition of stem cells
4. Cells are then frozen until ready for transplant
5. Second chemo to reduce leukocytes
6. Autologous stem-cell transplant. Immune system is reset.

Positive results from stem cell therapy are seen usually within a month, and patients can request another treatment about 6 months after the first treatment presently.

This stem cell paradigm of therapy addresses the etiology of a disease state, instead of focusing on the symptoms only. As such, this is the practice of regenerative medicine with the implementation of SCT.

Some believe ethical restraints are needed regarding the use of ESCs for therapeutic reasons. Yet they improve the quality of life of those with devastating diseases which involves suffering without any relief.

So stem cell therapy and research may be the most right and ethical thing to do for such patients. Not only is the tremedous suffering relieved with those possessed with devistating diseases, their functional ability is restored for those who receive stem cell therapy.

Embryos are acquired from fertility clinics (IVFs) that have thousands routinely stored and are abnormally fertilized. This means that they could never go on to become a human, and would be destroyed otherwise.

Ironically, one could argue it is inappropriate to discard what may be valuable and ethical for others, potentially.

Most couples with frozen embryos would gladly give them to such research, surveys have concluded.

These embryos are believed by many to not be morally equivalent to human life, but only have the potential for life. And they are used for therapeutic cloning, known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, and not reproductive cloning.

Ten states have banned this cloning out of ignorance, it seems. Bioethic principles, which are beneficience, or physician-centered decisions, as well as non-maleficence, which is first do no harm, are not corrupted.

Furthermore, autonomy, which is the patient?s right to determine their health, and justice or fairness remain intact.

Stem cells should be utilized for those terminally ill as well, many believe. Many are seeking stem cell therapy overseas due to restrictions that exist in the U.S. presently. The United Kingdom is believed to be the leader in stem cell research presently.

Dan Abshear

Obama has now flip-flopped so many times, that I find myself wondering if their really was an election last year.

Keeping America in the darkness of the Middle Ages seems to be all the cultists want due their incredible fear of being proven totally irrelevant to the 21st century and beyond.

(Pssst! Don't tell them the world is round!)

No problem though. Fortunately, other far more advanced countries are using stem cells for treatment, even finding that Adult Stem Cells from Cord Blood are more effective and less-dangerous than embryonic stem cells that can just as easily turn cancerous as not, and increasing their economy with American medical tourists trying to save their lives by leaving America to obtain treatment based on actual science.

Too bad about those Americans unable to travel though, guess the cultists just want them to die or exist in pain.

I thought Obama was going to be one of the good guys? Guess the old saying is still relevant: One can't become a Lincoln by reading about Lincoln; one can only become a Lincoln by thinking Lincolnesque thoughts and doing Lincolnesque things.

Maybe next time. See you in 4 years.

I am personally tired of people forgetting their Bio 101 and interchanging embryos and embryonic stem cells. Embryos are complete human organisms, albeit young, and ESC are just cells taken from the embryo.

This is an important distinction to understand, especially for ethical considerations.

...because the rest of the world, thankfully, knows how--and is no longer shy about--reining in its Holy Rollers.

We're the only country left that still lets the Religious (UN-) Right, tell Medical Researchers how to do their jobs.

To the extent that we permit religious meddling, America will be relegated to being a sideline country, regarding some of the most potent new therapies of our time. And no, adult stem cells are too often, NOT THE ANSWER.

However, the enlightened in this world--of necessity-- will simply relegate our once-great medical establishment, to a non-entity. No one will ask our opinion on anything any more--we've just empowered the superstitious and the scientific illiterates among us, to make our major health decisions for us.

The rest of the world can only--remembering America's former greatness in Medical Science especially--shake its head when it sees how low the once-mighty USA has fallen.

A sad commentary on the nation whose medical establishment cured polio, measles, and a host of other previously unstoppable diseases.

But in those days, the Holy Rollers were relegated to small churches (instead of the mega-monsters from the Bush administration) and speaking in tongues (that no one but they understood. Church was for Sundays--and healing the sick was for every other day of the week.

It would have been considered (back in the 60s and 70s) that only mental defectives, would give Radical Evangelicals, any kind of a say in our HealthCare....

Ellen, I think that there is a strong argument for moving to an opt-out system on organ donation, because there is a shortage of organs that leads to loss of life - that would be a very positive issue to raise, and hopefully we could see real progress.

But I'm not aware that there is any great shortage of potential donors for the creation of new embryonic stem cell lines. All that is needed is a sound process by which researchers can create new lines under some reasonable conditions, and be able to continue to use them afterward.

There are situations in which advances in bioethics will continue to be needed and where some retroactivity, at least in the sense of having qualms about new advances, may apply. To give an extreme (and unlikely) situation, consider how we would feel if someone devised a way to use an existing line of multipotent neural crest cells to create an animal with a largely human brain. (see LINK What we need is not a lack of ethics, but wise ethics, honest and probing, philosophically sound but practical.

It is good to see that President Obama is making real change to improve medical research; but with change there is always some degree of error. In general, the administration will not be able to gather and maintain support for making far-reaching changes unless it shows that it can acknowledge and fix defects in the new policies it creates. This will be one such opportunity.

Countless ESC are discarded, i.e., destroyed, by the private human fertilization clinics in the U.S. to save the expensive storage costs and space, which is legal and not challenged by the ethicists, yet why is it illegal or still controversial to allow a small percentage of those to be used for medical or biological research, instead? It is contradictory, unfair, and makes no sense from the ethical perspective.

This business of "bioethics" people justifying their existence by putting idiotic roadblocks in the way of research has to stop!

At the same time that bioethics "departments" are turning research into a paper chase worse than the IRS, they are ignoring the loss of human life which occurs because of lack of research progress. And they do absolutely nothing about the fact that certain researchers routinely endanger human life to protect a few publications of their careers. The "profession" exists to self-aggrandize.

This has reached insanity. Nobody is harmed in any way by gathering human biological samples and using them for medical research - regardless of whether or not permission was gotten.

The USA needs to go to a system much like that of organ donation in Europe. If you don't specifically opt out, then samples taken can be used - period. And if you ask me, if someone opts out, they better have a darn good reason for it.

All this rubbish from so-called "bioethics" mavens is purified garbage. It exists to feather the nests of bioethics departments with grants that take money from real research, and fat paychecks for the honchos. There is nothing else going on. Nobody is being protected, least of all patients!