Adult Stem Cell Therapy Blog

Adult Stem Cells Kill Brain Tumour Cells

Friday, March 03, 2006 - Stem Cell Guru

The headline grabs the attention but the reality is that the experimental treamtent is still at the animal testing stage. However, results have been very promising.

An article in the March 1, 2006 issue of Cancer Research reported on an animal study in which bone-marrow derived neural stem cells and a newly discovered cytokine* worked synergistically to track and kill glioma cells and offer long-term protection. However, researchers at Cedar Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles who undertook the stufy are very optimistic about the potential for treatment in humans.

“The paper recapitulates our previous data demonstrating that the neural stem cells – in this case from bone marrow – were able to track to the tumor very efficiently and, like a heat-seeking missile, deliver a killer depot,” said John S. Yu, M.D., neurosurgeon, co-director of the Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program at the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute, and the article’s senior author. “We obtained the stem cells from bone marrow, mirroring what we want to do clinically, which is to take bone marrow cells from a patient, make them into neural stem cells, put in the gene of interest and treat the patient.”

[*A cytokine is atype of protein that is released by cells of the immune system and act as intercellular mediators in the generation of an immune response.]

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