Adult stem cell successes
The Associated Press reported today:
Doctors have given a woman a new windpipe with tissue grown from her own stem cells, eliminating the need for anti-rejection drugs….
The transplant was given to Claudia Castillo, a 30-year-old Colombian mother of two living in Barcelona, suffered from tuberculosis for years….
Once doctors had a donor windpipe, scientists… stripped off all its cells, leaving only a tube of connective tissue.
Meanwhile, doctors… took a sample of Castillo’s bone marrow from her hip. They used the bone marrow’s stem cells to create millions of cartilage and tissue cells to cover and line the windpipe.
Then here’s another example of either media bias or stupidity. A Reuters story started today:
Stem cells from tiny embryos can be used to restore lost hearing and vision in animals, researchers said Tuesday in what they believe is a first step toward helping people.
But read on. Turns out scientists added genetic factors to frog stem cells and injected them into blind frog embryos. The born tadpoles could see.
So here we have a case of adult stem cells helping embryos, the opposite of the liberal plan. They’ll never learn – they don’t want to – but will Americans?
[HT: reader Kristie; photo of frog cell courtesy of Reuters]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
testing
testing
Based on Obama’s past voting record, we will never see this in adults. He voted NO on spending money for NON-embryonic stem cell research. He’ll throw money at almost anything but some not this.
Based on Obama’s past voting record, we will never see this in adults. He voted NO on spending money for NON-embryonic stem cell research. He’ll throw money at almost anything but some not this.
Posted by: lovethemboth at November 19, 2008 3:59 PM
Did he really? Wow! His stupidity just becomes more apparent.
He voted against the “Alternatives” bill that includes things like looking into IPSCs and trying to obtain ESCs without killing embryos. I don’t think he’d actually take money away from adult stem cell research, as he’s mentioned that it has potential. But you never know.
“The transplant was given to Claudia Castillo, a 30-year-old Colombian mother of two living in Barcelona, suffered from tuberculosis for years….
Once doctors had a donor windpipe, scientists… stripped off all its cells, leaving only a tube of connective tissue.
Meanwhile, doctors… took a sample of Castillo’s bone marrow from her hip. They used the bone marrow’s stem cells to create millions of cartilage and tissue cells to cover and line the windpipe.”
Cool- this is based on something the U of MN did with making a functioning beating heart using the exact same technique.
Rae –
Any idea how young a patient could be using this procedure? I haven’t read anything else like this and my nephew died of peritonitis that set in after trouble with his feeding tube. He had tracheal atresia (I’m pretty sure that was the diagnosis) and needed a feeding tube. He never left the hospital and died at three weeks.
I’m just wondering if they could have done this and used his cord blood. (Actually this was many years ago but I’m just wondering if it could be done today on an infant.)
Well first they needed the donor windpipe. And second is anyone here for human cloning?
Jess
ica Alba…. If we’re gonna clone, let’s start there.
Kristen,
I am sorry you lost your neph at such a young age. That makes me sad.
“Rae –
Any idea how young a patient could be using this procedure? I haven’t read anything else like this and my nephew died of peritonitis that set in after trouble with his feeding tube. He had tracheal atresia (I’m pretty sure that was the diagnosis) and needed a feeding tube. He never left the hospital and died at three weeks.”
@Kristin: I don’t know, it takes awhile for these organs to grow, because what they do is they remove the organ from the donor, use special detergents to strip the cells off of the cellular scaffolding (which is usually sugar and protein), this gets rid of all the antigens that cause rejection as the cellular scaffolding (which gives organs the shape that they have) is not immunogenic nor is it antigenic.
So then what they do is they take that scaffolding and in a way I am not familiar with…get it covered in unipotent (possibly multipotent?) stem cells to make that organ again.
Here is the link:
http://www.stemcell.umn.edu/stemcell/faculty/Taylor_D/home.html
http://www1.umn.edu/umnnews/Feature_Stories/Researchers_create_a_new_heart_in_the_lab.html
“I’m just wondering if they could have done this and used his cord blood. (Actually this was many years ago but I’m just wondering if it could be done today on an infant.)”
No, they couldn’t have done this with cord blood. Cord blood is multipotent- and the stem cells in cord blood are hematopoietic stem cells- meaning they make only blood cells. Of course, hematopoietic stem cells are able to make ALL blood cells, but they can only make blood cells, no epithelial cells (which make up tracheas, windpipes, etc).
Thanks Rae. I guess that now they would at least have the capability to do this, but it sounds like the baby would need to be older so they could take bone marrow just as they did in this case.
Carla,
Thanks, it was very sad. I was still a teen at the time but my sister was devastated. (Of course.) They knew long before the baby was born what the problem was but did a lot of research and talked to a lot of doctors about what would need to be done to help him.
Before she had him we used to joke about my sister “beating the odds.” She has PKU, which one is a gazillion people get. (Rae might know the exact statistic but it’s a lot.) And then she has a son with this issue which was also a large statistic. We told her she should play the lottery! Of course, after it happened it wasn’t at all funny.