Today is Stem Cell Awareness Day as proclaimed by Governors Arnold Scwartzenegger of California and Jim Doyle of Wisconsin. As promised, I will do my part to make the public aware of all of the recent advances that have been made in adult stem cell research.
First up: A girl in India is cured of thalassemia using the cord blood stem cells from her younger sibling. Thalassemia is a genetic disorder that requires regular blood transfusions. From DNAIndia.com:
On March 17, eight-year-old Thamirabharuni underwent surgery to receive the cord blood stem cell of her younger sibling, Pugazhendi. Thamira, as she is called, was suffering from thalassemia, a disorder that affects red blood corpuscles. A thalassemia patientmight require blood transfusion as frequently as once every week, and this disorder can be fatal in children.
Half a year after the successful operation, Thamira is brimming with joy and on the road to full recover. Born on November 21, 2001, in Coimbatore, she was a normal baby till she fell ill a year-and-a-half later and was diagnosed with thalassemia, needing blood transfusion every month.
Next, researchers have found that fat cells are more easily converted to induced pluripotent stem cells. From the San Jose Mercury News:
Leftover fat from liposuction may be a key to advancing stem cell research, according to a new Stanford School of Medicine study.
Stanford researchers have found that globs of fat removed during liposuction contain cells that can be efficiently reprogrammed to become induced pluripotent stem cells -- a type of stem cell that does not require the use of an embryo.
Stanford surgery professor and study co-author Dr. Michael Longaker described the leftover fat as "liquid gold."
Lets keep going.
Scientists in the UK announced they have promising results in a trial using a patients own stem cells to treat heart attack damage. From the Times Online:
DOCTORS believe they have achieved a breakthrough in trials to use stem cells as a treatment for the repair of damaged hearts.
The British researchers have observed "positive changes" among heart attack victims in a trial to have stem cells injected into their organs at two London hospital trusts.
The cells, taken from the patients' own bone marrow, were administered within six hours of the participants suffering the attacks.
I could go on all day. Researchers at Scripps research institute have cured cystinosis in rats using bone marrow stem cells. From KPBS:
San Diego researchers say they have used stem cells to cure a rare but deadly disease in lab animals.
Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute were targeting a disease called cystinosis. The disease occurs in children when a cell byproduct, cystine, cannot be discarded by cells due to a genetic disorder. This results in a host of diseases that include diabetes and kidney failure.
Scripps researchers took stem cells taken from bone marrow and put them into lab mice. They found the stem cells either replaced or fused with the defective cells in every body tissue, and that cured the mice. Stephanie Cherqui, the principal investigator of the research, says stem cells normally target one organ, and experts didn't expect success with a multi-systemic disease like cystinosis.
And let us not forget advances in treatments for diabetes, Parkinson's, cystic fibrosis, blindness, lupus, sickle cell anemia, and autism.
There are even more advances to read about at Reflections of a Paralytic.
Last but certainly not least, a reminder that embryonic stem cells have yet to even enter human trials. Geron, a California company, was very close to conducting the very first human trial using human embryonic stem cells. The FDA has put a indefinite hold on the study due to the development of cysts in some animals in their earlier trials. From San Jose Mercury News:
But in a prepared statement Thursday, Geron said the hold resulted from the discovery of cysts in some animals given the cells. Although the cysts had appeared in some earlier animal studies, they appeared with "a higher frequency" in more recent animals tests, the company said.
