Everyday I scan many pages of information on stem cells, including the Google Alerts I get 5-10 times a day. Sometimes, I get fired up enough to send my own comment to an article or opinion. Yesterday, I responded to an opinion claiming that 65 diseases can be successfully treated with adult stem cells and referring to an article in the Washington Post. Since I have been diligently exploring the comparison of adult and embryonic stem cells, I read the referenced article only to find no reference to 65 diseases. My opinion was posted (I guess), but I received no response to my comment that statements with faulty or no corroboration are what make ordinary people so confused about stem cell research.
Today, while following leads, I tripped over a site I should have found long ago (http://www.stemcellresearch.com). For some reason, it didn't turn up on Google or Yahoo searches. Anyway, lo and behold, the right side of the screen has 65 vs. 0 for adult stem cells vs. embryonic stem cells. The list of diseases/conditions successfully treated by adult stem cell transplants looked very familiar and, as I linked to the reference list, I knew why. These were the very references sent to me as her own by the head of an organization opposed to embryonic stem cell research. Funny thing, none of the pages had their original footers identifying the real source of the references.
We at Geneforum have been using a blog--rather than just posting chunks of information or providing a list of today's 15 news releases for several reasons. Among them is the comments capability. Anyone reading the blogs can comment or ask questions. Another is to provide an experts analysis of the voluminous, often contradictory, information available primarily through the Internet. I try, as much as possible, to give you the source of the information unless its available from many different sources. And what I write, unless I add a statement such as taken directly from, is original. I read, dig, and read some more until I am fairly confident that what I am posting is accurate and untainted as much as possible by my personal opinions.
Thanks for reading, and please refer others to this site.
Marie Godfrey, PhD
Here are the categories and specific diseases/conditions that www.stemcellresearch.com states are successfully treated by adult stem cells.
Cancers:
Auto-Immune Diseases
Cardiovascular
Ocular
Immunodeficiencies
Neural Degenerative Diseases/Injuries
Anemias/Blood Conditions
Wounds/Injuries
Other Metabolic Disorders
The majority of these are treated by bone marrow transplants, the category of stem cell treatment discussed previously in 7 parts in this blog.
Marie Godfrey, PhD
A recent news article reminded me that "adult" stem cell research continues while the issue of federal funding of embryonic stem cell research remains unchanged. The article I saw came June 2 from WTAE Channel 4 Action News in Pittsburg and highlights Richard Howell's receipt of stem cells in an effort to reverse the heart failure that "left him too weak to leave his living room and at risk for complications, including organ failure."
Howell is one of a number of patients in experimental stem cell studies. This one is taking place at the Cleveland Clinic, recently a recipient of a $24 million grant--along with Case Western Reserve University (Case) and its partners, University Hospitals of Cleveland (UHC), and Athersys, Inc.
According to Dr. Stephen Ellis of The Cleveland Clinic: "Mr. Howell received 18 separate injections encompassing about 200 million cells. By giving these cells, the hope is the heart muscle will function better, contract better." The cells came--not from bone marrow, as might have been expected, or even from peripheral blood cells, but--from thigh muscle cells.
One of the fascinating aspects of the source of the stem cells is that cardiac muscle and thigh muscle cells are different types and designed for different functions. One type does not generally convert into the other. The news article did not explain how stem cells--rather than fully developed muscle cells--were identified and removed for transplant.
So far, Howell--who couldn't walk to the mail box--is "out of his living room and on the beach" 6 weeks after surgery. Howell agreed to take the risks--including possible arrhythmias or potentially lethal rapid heart rhythms--even though it may take months, or even years, before anyone knows if the experiment was successful.
The news article can be found at http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/health/9314174/detail.html Details about the Cleveland Clinic are accessible from their home page: www.clevelandclinic.org
Marie Godfrey, PhD
One of the strong messages from the stem cell meeting in San Francisco over the weekend was that stem cell research needs to show some new successes soon. For many reasons, embryonic stem cell research is unlikely to provide new treatments or curescat least not in humanscwithin the next couple of years. Even though some clinical trials are planned, these are generally Phase I trials, which are intended to test the safety not the efficacy of stem cell treatments.
A new federal program focused on cell-based therapies that could be ready for clinical trials testing within two years announced Sept 29 that my favorite institution Johns Hopkins is one of three centers to receive five-year funding ($12 million) from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute as a Specialized Center for Cell-Based Therapy for Heart, Lung and Blood Diseases (SCCT). Hopkins is the only center dedicated to new therapies for heart problems. The SCCT initiative will focus on two major projects.
Marbin's group will study the potential of using a patient's own cardiac stem cells to repair heart tissue soon after a heart attack, or to regenerate weakened muscle resulting from heart failure. By using a persons own adult stem cells instead of those from another donor, there would be no risk of triggering an immune response that could cause rejection. Marb¡n was recently successful in replicating large numbers of cardiac stem cells in the lab within a very short time, as little as four weeks. The stem cells, extracted from healthy parts of hearts not otherwise damaged by heart attack, grew to form clusters, called cardiospheres, which contain cells that retain the ability to regenerate themselves and to develop into more specialized heart cells that can conduct electrical currents and contract like heart muscle should.
Hare's group will evaluate adult mesenchymal stem cells (the stem cells in bone marrow that do not form blood cells) as a potential therapy to heal damaged hearts. Last year, his research in animals showed that stem cells harvested from one pig's bone marrow and injected into another pig's damaged heart restored heart function and repaired damaged heart muscle by 50 percent to 75 percent after just two months of therapy. In March 2005, Hare and other researchers began a Phase I clinical trial to test the safety of injecting adult stem cells at varying doses in patients who have recently suffered a heart attack. In total, 48 patients will participate in this study, which involves several sites across the country, including Hopkins. Results are not expected until mid-2006. Because mesenchymal stem cells are in an early stage of development, they, too, avoid potential problems with immune rejection, in which every humans immune system might attack stem cells from sources other than itself.
Marie Godfrey, PhD
Wow! Google Alerts finally sent me an article that discusses both the genetics of stem cells and my alma mater, The Johns Hopkins University. At the same time, the article feeds into my current discussion of the usability of adult vs. embryonic stem cells.
The notice I received connected to http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/514125/ and was summarized with the following clip:
An international team of researchers has discovered that human embryonic stem cell lines accumulate changes in their genetic material over time.
The researchers' work is described in the Sept. 4 online edition of Nature Genetics.
Anirban Maitra and Dan Arking, two of the authors and members of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins state:
Embryonic stem cells are actually far more genetically stable than other stem cells, but our work shows that even they can accumulate potentially deleterious changes over time. Now it will be important to figure out why these changes occur, how they affect the cells' behavior and how time affects other human embryonic stem cell lines.
So, should we continue restricting funding of embryonic stem cell research to lines existing 4 years ago? Should all stem cell transplants be freshly-harvested adult stem cells? What happens with stem cell lines developed from stored umbilical cord cells? Hmmm, once again, more questions than answers.
Marie Godfrey, PhD
Since I have not yet created a template for my blog entries, I return to old ones to make the font, spacing, etc. the same. Today, I happened to stumble on my July 3 blog and see that I have been wrong about Frist's changes of mind and when they occurred. His most recent to back the removal of federal funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research is his second switch, as I have been saying. But, the first switch from support to banning occurred back in 2001 after Bush restricted federal funding, not in April of this year. I had the date incorrect.
This morning's (6 August 2005) Google Alerts brought me an article from WorldNet Daily, Grants Pass Oregon, written by Kelly Hollowell, JD, PhD, Senior Strategist at the Center for Reclaiming America. The alert read: A detailed list of supporting references is available on request to my e-mail address below, as is a list of adult stem cell applications for 65 human diseases. Had another portion of the article been chosen for the alert, such as her quotes from Frist, I might never have checked out the article. As it was, I read it finding a discussion countering Frist's use of unique to describe embryonic stem cell capabilities. Hollowell states:
According to more than 15 recent publications in leading and peer-reviewed scientific journals, adult stem cells have the same pluripotency and/or capacity to multiply as embryonic stem cells.
The most recent and groundbreaking publication, by Dr. John Huard, director of the Growth and Development Laboratory at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, confirms that adult stem cells have the same ability as embryonic stem cells to multiply. This publication appears in the July 2005 edition of Molecular Biology of the Cell. The paper is appropriately under consideration for Molecular Biology of the Cell paper of the year.
Other data clearly demonstrate the ability of adult stem cells to form heart, liver, kidney, muscle, brain, nerve, insulin-producing, hair, skin, lung, retina, intestinal and spleen cells. The data also demonstrate that adult stem cells have the ability to regenerate damaged tissue.
I responded to the article immediately, adding some comments of my own, and requested the list of references, which she promptly sent. Of course, I also invited her to check out Geneforum and add her comments to the discussion.
I'll be reviewing as many articles as I can, so I can digest the information she references and bring you a summary of what I find. These references are a perfect source for my last blog entry question: how do adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells compare in potential? Unfortunately, searching MedLine or Google scholarly for successful stem-cell treatments has been frustrating. Thank you, Dr. Hollowell.
Marie Godfrey, PhD
David A. Prentice, a scientist with the conservative Family Research Council is one of the people advocating tight restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. According to an article in the July 15th Washington Post and a letter to the editor of Science magazine, Prentice's claims that adult stem cells have at least as much medical potential as embryonic cells are not supported by even the references he gives in his examples.
Shane Smith of the Children's Neurobiological Solutions Foundation in Santa Barbara, Calif.; William B. Neaves of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Mo.; and Steven Teitelbaum of Washington University in St. Louis went through Prentice's footnoted documentation and concluded that most of his examples are wrong. For example:
"All told, the scientists concluded, there are only nine diseases that have been proved to respond to treatment with adult stem cells." (Washington Post).
The Post quotes from the Science letter as follows:
By promoting the falsehood that adult stem cell treatments are already in general use for 65 diseases and injuries, Prentice and those who repeat his claims mislead laypeople and cruelly deceive patients.
Prentice, in a brief voice message left for a Post reporter, is quoted as saying, "I appreciate them pointing out some of the things . . . that need to be changed and updated." But, the Post reports that "he accused the letter writers of 'mental gymnastics' by focusing narrowly on proven therapies, as opposed to the large number of diseases for which the value of adult stem cells is now being tested."
The issue of adult vs embryonic stem cell research has been discussed here in the Genetizen blog several times. To see these entries, adult stem cells in the search box on this page.
Marie Godfrey, PhD