The email below was received by Don Margolis, Co-founder of TheraVitae Ltd., yesterday.
'J.' had been looking for a treatment for her father-in-law for some time and, over the past few months, has been in regular contact with Don regarding the possibility of having her father-in-law accepted as a patient by TheraVitae in order to undergo VesCell therapy. (All patients have to meet specific criteria laid down by medical professionals before they are accepted for treatment by TheraVitae.)
Over the months 'J.' has learned a lot about the treatment provided; our company; and the cardiologists whom we work in partnership with.
Her email sums up her family's journey to date . . .
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From: J. To: Donald Margolis Sent: 2006-08-30 16:17:35
Dear Don
Thank you so much for all the personalized care and compassion you have shown me during this most stressful time. I cannot express to you my gratitude for you, Dick, and your company. My father-in-law lost his wife to ovarian cancer in 2003. He tried so hard, then, to find a "miracle" cure for her, but eventually knew that it was just not going to happen.
He has been told since 1985 that he is "amazing" in the eyes of medicine, as they would have not thought he could have lived very long then. He is a fighter and has been determined to have a stem cell treatment for over a year now, when he read about it in the reader's digest. I very much dismissed him for quite a while. Being a nurse and providing conventional medicine for so long now, I new that the US was not going to provide this treatment for him. It was not until I came cross your company, that I finally began to believe that this may be the answer. He keeps telling me that he WILL be on his roller blades again. He wore them until last fall almost every day.
I know that the odds are against us. I totally understand your physicians being very careful about their choice of patients. No matter whether my father is accepted into your treatment program or not, I will continue to follow your company. You are truly on the edge of saving so many lives.
Your determination as a company as well as you, Don, as an individual is miraculous. I applaud you from the bottom of my heart for all that you have done for medicine. It truly has me in tears. My father is so important to us, but looking at the big picture, this procedure will be SO important to SO many and I respect any decision that your doctors make. Having said that, I will call in the morning to schedule his TEE and continue saying prayers that this procedure is in the cards for him.
May God bless you and all the people involved in your company.
Warmest Regards
J.
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Emails we have received from patients and their family members can be found on the Patient Progress area of our website.
There are many successful adult stem cell treatments, such as TheraVitae's VesCell therapy, which has completed clinical trialing, been used to treat significant numbers of patients and whose results have been well documented in TV reports, newspapers and medical journals.
However, in the wake of more and more cases of people opting for unproven embryonic stem cell therapies, researchers, from King's College London, published their concerns in the British Medical Journal according to the BBC News website
Premature use of stem cell therapy could put many patients at risk of contracting disease, say the experts. They warn that without adequate safety measures use of the cells runs the risk of infecting patients with viruses and prion diseases, such as vCJD.
This warning applies to embryonic stem cells, as stem cells have not yet been grown in the conditions that would be expected, for instance, for any pharmaceutical product destined for human consumption. But the researchers suggest that expanded stem cells lines should be tested for a variety of pathogens before they are released for use.
They warn that science should learn the lessons from disasters, such as the HIV infection of haemophilia patients who received tainted blood transfusions.
Professor Roger Pederson, an expert in regenerative medicine at Cambridge University, told the BBC News website he was confident that stem cell research in the UK was safe. However, he said research of a more dubious nature was taking place elsewhere.
"The rule of thumb here is that if anyone is asked to pay to take part in a trial, then they probably should not do it," he said. "Any legitimate trials will be paid for by governmental sources."
A five-year-old girl from Sussex, south England, has started receiving stem cell therapy in a remote hospital in China in an attempt to halt a degenerative disease. Sacha Skinner, from Brighton, suffers from Batten's Disease - a rare disorder inherited through her genes - which affects her speech and movement.
Her family raised £20,000 for the trip as the treatment is illegal in the UK. Sacha is scheduled to have four injections taken from umbilical cords over a period of one month.
Annette Dacosta, Sacha's mother, said: "Maybe I am offering her up as a guinea pig to be the first child to see what happens with stem cells. If it works, fantastic. If it doesn't work, then my child's had four injections and she's come out of it unscathed. Yes there is a moral issue but no one's getting hurt. Umbilical cord stem cells are being used for Sacha which would normally be incinerated."
Sacha will be treated at a clinic in Shenyang in northern China.
Over the weekend, a story, or rather a part of a story, from 7 Days, Dubai caught my eye. The main part of the article covers general matters related to storing umbilical stem cells and their potential benefits and uses. However, the paragraph that caught my eye related to use for the cells that I hadn't previously considered.
Stem Cells as an 'insurance policy’. This notion has caught the eye of numerous professional footballers, as it could prove useful in saving their football careers if they were ever to be seriously injured. Eight Premiership (England's top soccer league) players in the past year are said to have frozen the stem cells taken from the umbilical cord blood of their newborn as a possible future cure for any cartilage or ligament problems they may receive.
As stem cell research raises the possibility that doctors will be able to grow tissue that exactly matches a person’s own, thereby offering opportunities to replace bad cells and reduce the risk of rejection in the event of a transplant. As a footballer, being prone to injury can mean the end of your career, so having your stem cells - a repair kit if you like - on hand could make sense.
Dr Dean Edell from California's ABC7News, recently in cluded a research summary of the progress made in the field of srtem cell heart therapies.
His one page round-up includes background information and reasons why there's a growing need for this type of treatment. For example, did you realise that well over 1 million people have a heart attack in the USA every year? That's a lot of people with weak hearts and a lot of people who could potentially benefit from any form of therapy that could regrow damaged heart tissue and blood vessels. It's no wonder that researchers around the world are looking for effective treatments for heart disease that utuilze the healing properties of stem cells. VesCell, from TheraVitae is one such therapy that has a remarkable success rate. For more details visit www.VesCell.com
The big stem cells news today, which you'll see on CNN and in every major newspaper, is that scientists have found a way to make human embryonic stem cells without destroying embryos, a breakthrough that could overcome intense ethical objections to the research.
The Guardian (UK) newspaper has a full report on the research including comments from fellow researchers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Scientists in the US claim their technique sidesteps objections to embryonic stem cell research by not harming embryos, and so gives researchers an ethical way to create valuable stockpiles of stem cells for the first time.
British experts applauded the discovery yesterday, but raised questions about its success rate and the practical benefits it would bring to patients.
Scientists led by Robert Lanza at Advanced Cell Technology in Massachusetts created the stem cells by adapting a technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), which is already used in fertility clinics to check IVF embryos for genetic defects.
Dr Lanza's group showed that the single cell removed from an embryo can be grown into many cells overnight, and some of those can then be turned into embryonic stem cells.
However, the research has raised concerns among scientists and lobby groups. Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: "We still don't know the dangers of taking a biopsy from an early stage embryo, whether it has any effect on the baby's future development. On paper it looks like an ethical solution, but that requires the biopsy to be completely harmless."
Robin Lovell-Badge, a stem cell expert at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, said that while the work was important, it was inefficient and unlikely to lead to plentiful stocks of embryonic stem cells. "It requires couples having IVF to give permission to have cells taken from their embryos and it's extremely unlikely a couple would want to do that," he said.
Other scientists said the research was merely an attempt to circumvent strict laws on stem cell research in the US. Peter Braude, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at King's College London, said: "This is a way of trying to get around legislation, not practise science. The bottom line is if you believe there is a future in stem cell research, one has to pursue all sorts of ways of growing them."
Prof Braude said he doubted whether the controversy could be avoided by the American breakthrough. "We don't undertake embryo biopsy willy-nilly, as it is better not to remove a cell from a developing embryo unless one really has to," he said. "I certainly cannot see why one would wish to try and remove a cell from a healthy embryo with such low odds of developing a stem line from it when many thousands of useful cells are harvested from a baby's placenta at birth, if one needed to do it. Equally, I'm not persuaded by arguments that this is a more ethical way of getting stem cell lines, as it is not impossible that biopsy compromises the developing embryo from which one removes the cell."
India's first private cord blood bank will bring the revolutionary medical breakthrough of umbillcal cord stem cell banking to the country.
LifeCell, pioneers in stem cell banking and research, has enrolled 3,000 expectant parents for stem cell banking within 20 months of its inception. The company currently has 16 marketing and collection centres in India and plans to expand to 24 cities by December 2006.
This year, an exclusive stem cell therapy centre in association with Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute, at Chennai is planned. The centre will start operations in September 2006, the statement said.
Are you involved in stem cell research? Have you always wanted to have an audience with the Pope?
If the answer to both these questions is 'Yes' then you'll be very interested in a report in the Catholic News regarding the Pontifical Academy for Life which will organize an international conference on stem-cell research between September 14-16.
This will focus on the prospects for medical advances through stem-cell research, and the bioethical problems associated with those efforts.
The conference will draw experts from Germany, England, Australia, Italy, the United States, and Portugal. Pope Benedict XVI will receive the participants in a private audience during their stay in Rome. The discussions will be held at the Augustinianum, near the Vatican, and will include lawmakers and health-care administrators as well as doctors and medical researchers.
The discussions will center on the clinical application of various advances in stem-cell research. The final day of the conference will be devoted to the ethical issues involved, particularly in the use of stem cells obtained from human embryos.
TheraVitae Founder Don Margolis issued the following Press Release to pass on his birthday wishes to stem cell heart patient Don Ho.
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Bangkok, Thailand (PRWEB) August 18, 2006 -- Don Margolis, Founder of TheraVitae, the producer of VesCell Adult Stem Cell Therapy for Heart Disease wished legendary Hawaiian crooner Don Ho a happy birthday today from his home in Bangkok, Thailand.
“A friend sent me a recent story published in the Honolulu Advertiser about Don Ho. When I met him at Bangkok Heart Hospital last year, we hit it off right away. I am delighted to see that Don’s recovery has progressed so well. I just wanted to take this opportunity to wish Don a happy 76th birthday -- and many more,” said Margolis.
TheraVitae is one of the world’s leading stem cell therapy companies, focused on using the patient's own (autologous) adult stem cells to treat a variety of disorders, especially cardiovascular diseases. Nominated by the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer for 2006, the company conducted a clinical trial in Bangkok, Thailand that led to the approval of its first commercial therapy for "no option" heart patients, VesCell. Over 130 patients suffering from very severe angina pectoris or heart failure have been successfully treated with VesCell by either administration of the cells through the heart arteries, or by direct injection into the heart muscle.
On April 12, 2006, the company announced the enrollment of its first patient in a clinical trial to study the safety and efficacy of the administration of autologous adult stem cells to patients suffering from severe Peripheral Artery Disease (PAD), a deficiency of blood supply to the lower limbs.
Belated birthday wishes to popular Hawaiian entertainer Don Ho, famous for his 1966 hit "Tiny Bubbles," who turned 76 last Sunday.
The Washington Times reported that after nearly 45 years of being on stage in Waikiki, the undisputed king of Hawaiian entertainers finally admits age is finally a factor.
"I never thought I was my age until they showed me my picture taken in a hospital bed and underneath, (the caption) said I was 75," Ho said in an interview with the Honolulu Advertiser. "All these years, I thought I was going to live forever."
The picture was taken while Ho recovered VesCell adult stem cell therapy which he undertook to regenerate heart muscle last December in Thailand. In the process, Ho's stem cells, derived from his own blood, were injected into his heart.
Last year a Honolulu doctor told Ho his heart was damaged almost beyond repair. His heart was operating at 10 percent capacity, and he was often breathless and exhausted. Ho said it feels like his heart is up to 50 percent capacity, bringing new hope.
His experience has turned him into a rabid reader of health and fitness magazines. He exercises, has checkups every three months, takes supplements and watches what he eats and what he does.
For more information on Don Ho, visit his website DonHo.com
Science Daily cover the news that with the introduction of just four factors, researchers have successfully induced differentiated cells taken from mouse embryos or adult mice to behave like embryonic stem cells.
The researchers, from Kyoto University in Japan, report their findings in August's edition of the journal 'Cell'.
The cells, which the researchers designate "induced pluripotent stem cells", exhibit the physical, growth, and genetic characteristics typical of embryonic stem cells, they reported. "Pluripotent" refers to the ability to differentiate into most other cell types.
Why is this breakthrough, if repeatable using human cells, important? "Human embryonic stem cells might be used to treat a host of diseases, such as Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury, and diabetes," said Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan. "However, there are ethical difficulties regarding the use of human embryos, as well as the problem of tissue rejection following transplantation into patients." Those problems could be circumvented if pluripotent cells could be obtained directly from the patients' own cells.
Takahashi et al.: 'Induction of Pluripotent Stem Cells from Mouse Embryonic and Adult Fibroblast Cultures by Defined Factors' Published online August 10; Scheduled for the August 25, 2006 issue of Cell.
Scotland's Daily Record newspaper has an exclusive report about a young man who is heading to the Netherlands for pioneering stem cell treatment in a bid to restore his sight.
Phil Cuthberston will be the first person to have the procedure to treat Lebers, the condition that robbed him of his vision.
Nerve damage caused by the genetic condition has left him in a world of blurs and he has difficulty making out colours. Phil was 20 when he was robbed of his eyesight overnight - just weeks after he started dating Yvette. He underwent six months of tests before being diagnosed with Lebers. A genetic illness that affects only about 100 Scots.
Phil will have thousands of stem cells - taken from an umbilical cord - injected into his body. Half will be injected into his arm, a quarter will go into his right temple and the rest into his left.
To the layman the method of treatment seems rather hit and miss as the cells dont apear to have been differentiated into the specific type required to restore the damaged areas of the eye. In addition, researchers have discovered that targetting the injections of cells as near as possible to the diseased area improves the success rate of the treatment.
We wish Phil well and will be watching the Scottish newspapers for details of his progress. The complete article can be read here.
A couple of weeks ago I added an article about the new Singaporean Bio-tech centre that was seeking out the best and brightest stem cell researchers and recruiting them.
I also posted another article about the British Prime Miniter, Tony Blair, encouraging Californian stem cell researchers to work in the UK.
Fortunately for the future of American stem cell research, the brain drain isnt all one way. Australian researchers are now being recruited by leading American universities. The latest to be headhunted is Dr. Paul Simmons who will head up the new Centre for Stem Cell Biology at the University of Texas in Houston, according to The Australian newspaper.
From his new office, Dr Simmons will serve as president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, a group that includes adult and embryonic stem cell scientists. "These two areas of research really fit very much hand-in-glove," Dr Simmons said.
Today's post is from the Methuselah Mouse Prize website and is a summary of recent adult stem cell trials:
Even a brief glance at a site like ClinicalTrials.gov shows that a great deal of stem cell work is presently moving into the trial stage in the US. I thought I'd point out studies in Thailand and the UK today, however, since both have been in the mainstream media recently. As I've mentioned in the past, groups in Thailand are engaged in building an effective research and development infrastructure, attracting cutting edge work away from death by regulation in the US and Europe. This article points out continued progress:
The project seeks to help victims of Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury and strokes, and transplanting of developed stem cells into patients' central nervous systems is expected to begin this year
"[Don't hold your breath], we're just at the beginning," said neurosurgeon Smarn Tangaroosin of the Prasat Neurological Institute. "Though the efficacy of stem-cell transplant remains uncertain, it's proved to be safe so far."
The Prasat team is still undecided whether to use embryonic or adult stem cells, both of which have pros and cons that need to be weighed very carefully, Smarm said.
[With Parkinson's] we're determining whether to grow dopaminergic neurons [nerve cells] outside and then inject them into the patient's bodies, or inject premature cells and then programme them to become the proper nerve cells later
Meanwhile, scientists in the UK are making progress with bone regeneration using adult stem cells that is on a par with the state of the art in heart tissue regeneration. From the BBC:
It involves taking stem cells from the patient's bone marrow, stimulating them in a laboratory, then implanting them back into her leg. The stem cells help to grow new bone and knit the fracture site together. These patients have already had several operations on fractures that haven't healed over several years and are facing amputation or a lifetime of pain and disability. Having just completed the tenth stem cell implant, the initial results are extremely encouraging.
The therapies derived from this technology base will only become more impressive and effective in the years ahead. In the 2020s we will look back and wonder how people survived without access to a general purpose repair kit for damaged and diseased tissue. The answer being, of course, that all too often they don't - we should all be glad that a wide range of horrible, fatal injuries and age-related conditions will soon vanish from common view.
Whilst that news is interesting, most readers of this blog will probably be wondering what the Methuselah Mouse Prize is and what it has got to do with stem cell research. . . . the explanation can be found on the Methusalah Foundation's website.
The Methuselah Mouse Prize (MPrize), is the premiere effort of the Methuselah Foundation and is being offered to the scientific research team who develops the longest living Mus musculus, the breed of mouse most commonly used in scientific research. Developing interventions which work in mice are a critical precursor to the development of human anti-aging techniques, for once it is demonstrated that aging in mice can be effectively delayed or reversed, popular attitudes towards aging as 'inevitable' will no longer be possible.
When aging in mice is shown to be 'treatable' the funding necessary for a full-line assault on the aging process will be made available. This is the true power of the Methuselah Mouse Prize, to demonstrate a proof of principle, and give hope to the world that decline in function and age-related disease are no longer guarantees, for us, or for future generations, if we work together now.
On Aug. 16, Braselton GA. resident Richard Behlog and his wife, Terre, will fly to Bangkok, to receive treatment for Richard’s congestive heart failure.
On 9 August, Richard's local news website Main Street News covered his story. It relates his experiences of looking for some form of treatment for his dehabilitating disease in the USA and finding, to his surprise, that no options were forthcoming at home.
When Richard was diagnosed in January, doctors told him there was virtually nothing they could do to treat the problem outside of prescribing blood-pressure medications. Richard and Terre, peeved by what they viewed as a lack of choices, began looking for alternative treatments and eventually found TheraVitae.
A common factor amongst many of TheraVitae's patients is their, and their family's, determination not to give up when their doctors say that there is nothing that can be done for them. In Richard & Terre's case they were unhappy with the initial advice of local cardiologists that Richard should focus primarily on keeping his blood pressure down.
“We just didn’t expect that answer, that there’s nothing we can do,” Terre said. “This is just not an option for us.”
I hope you'll join us in wishing good health for Richard and that his visit to Bangkok will prove to be a life changing experience.
A warning, if one were needed, to do throrough research before undertaking any form of stem cell therapy.
This story from LifeNews.com regards a South African businessman and his American girlfriend who made a fortune selling fraudulent stem cell therapies to unsuspecting patients. Terminally ill patients paid as much as $24,000 for an injection of stem cells that were not targeted towards the disease the patient had.
South African Stephen van Rooyen and American Laura Brown will appear at a hearing tomorrow in a South African court after Interpol agents tracked them down. According to the Cape Argus newspaper, the couple charged thousands of dollars for a one-time injection of 1.5 million stem cells.
Seeking to make money off of what has become a global issue where lawmakers and lobbyists promise miracle cures, patients received the same injection regardless of their disease, and the injections were not part of any approved stem cell therapy for a specific condition.
The couple told patients that the stem cells came from umbilical cord blood stem cells harvested after birth. They told patients that the stem cells, once injected, would travel to the site of the disease and repair the body.
The byline for the above article from the Wisconsin Technology Network carries the byline 'Who is telling the truth and who is spinning away?'
The article is a lengthy look at arguments for & against embryonic research also looks at how claims by advocates of both embryonic & adult stem cell therapies are 'spun' in order to grab media attention.
Rather than using attention grabbing headlines with little or no actual substance, the writers of this article have put together a well written piece which is well worth reading regardless of your views or opinions on forms of stem cell research. To be honest, I dont think any readers - except those sitting firmly on the fence - will be in 100% agreement or disagreement with the arguments and facts put forward.
Stem Cell Bangkok is a new website set up to announce the upcoming 'Bangkok International Symposium on Stem Cell Therapy for the Failing Heart' which will be held at InterContinental Hotel Bangkok, Thailand from December 1st – 3rd, 2006.
This conference is designed to provide an outstanding three days of comprehensive insight into the status of cardiac stem cell research and its applications. The meeting brings together the world’s leading scientists in the specialty to discuss their latest clinical techniques and current research, giving better insight into the emerging technologies and techniques in this field.
This year, the focus will be placed on recent advances in cardiac stem cell research, both in animals and humans; and their clinical applications in the treatment of myocardial infarction and intractable heart failure.
The program will provide a wealth of educational opportunities for researchers, cardiologists and cardiothoracic surgeons in expanding their academic thought processes and clinical skills.
When adult stem cells are extracted from bone marrow, blood or the umbilical cored the number of stem cells needs to be multiplied ("expanded") in order to produce enough for a theraputic dose.
Today's article is from Medicinenews.net which reports on researchers at the Whitehead Institute Biomedical Research who have discovered a way to multiply adult stem cell s 30-fold, an expansion that offers tremendous promise for treatments such as bone marrow transplants and perhaps even gene therapy.
Unlike embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells are generally tissue-specific, each one destined to develop into several kinds of cells. Chengcheng Zhang, a researcher in the Lodish lab, was determined to develop a way to multiply adult stem cells once they've been isolated from tissue. Achieving this goal required some intricate laboratory sleuthing.
Zhang began by studying adult hematopoietic stem cells. Offspring of some of these cells develop into all of the red and white blood cells, while others form the immune system. Using fetal tissue from mice as the source of these cells, Zhang discovered a population of cells that were not stem cells, yet appeared to interact with stem cells, preserving and allowing them to multiply in the fetal environment. When he isolated the stem cells in the lab and cultured them in a dish by themselves, they died. When he mixed them with these newly discovered cells, they thrived.
Zhang used a microarray platform to search for genes that were active in these newly discovered cells, but not active in similar neighboring cells. Some such genes, he reasoned, might encode secreted proteins that sustained stem cells. Eventually, he located a number of such genes.
Later, Zhang then discovered that two more growth factor proteins, When Zhang combined these two proteins with the genes and added them to hematopoietic stem cells, the result was a 30-fold increase.
"People have been culturing and working with these cells for years, and never before have we seen such an increase," said Zhang.
It's not only western nations that are vying to become stem cell reasearch hubs. Thailand's 'The Nation' newspaper today reports on plans to conduct clinical trials of stem-cell therapy to treat three major neural diseases at the Prasat Neurological Institute, Bangkok.
The project seeks to help victims of Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury and strokes, and transplanting of developed stem cells into patients' central nervous systems is expected to begin this year. A team of about 12 neurological and stem-cell experts is currently reviewing the published results of related studies from all over the world for the project..
The project proposal is being drafted and needs approval from the institute's ethics committee before patient trials can start. Mahidol University's cell engineering and tissue growth laboratory will develop the proper type of stem cells for the project, said Ahnond Bunyaratvej, the secretary-general of the National Research Council of Thailand.
However, viable therapies arent expected in the short term as neurosurgeon Smarn Tangaroosin confirms "Don't hold your breath, we're just at the beginning, though the efficacy of stem-cell transplant remains uncertain, it's proved to be safe so far."
Last weekend, The Galway Independent newspaper, (Ireland) made mention of a new stem cell laboratory on the grounds of University College Hospital Galway which has been given the go ahead.
It was in early July that NUI Galway researchers announced that clinical trials of stem cells on heart disease patients could start collaboratively between NUI Galway and University College Hospital within two years subject to regulatory approval.
Researchers at the National University of Ireland Galway only now need the approval of the Irish Medicines Board (IMB) and a local ethics committee to go ahead with the trials in conjunction with doctors at Galway's University College Hospital.
The research will be the first of its type in Ireland.
Yesterday, CNN featured a lengthy article on the work of stem cell researchers and looked into what the future holds as far as readily available treatments go.
To its advocates stem cell therapies promise a medical revolution that will enable all of us to live longer, healthier lives.
But to its critics embryonic stem cell research threatens to undermine what it means to be human. The debate may already be under way, but the likely clinical benefits of stem cell research are at least a decade away, according to scientists.
Professor Colin McGuckin, a specialist in regenerative medicine at the UK's Newcastle University, said the prospect of imminent treatments for conditions affecting the nervous system such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease had been exaggerated.But he said stem cell therapies for degenerative disorders afflicting major organs such as the heart and liver could be available within 10 years.
"What we're going to see is one or two patients being helped in some way and people are going to hail it as the end of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's," McGuckin told CNN. "But it's going to be a slow process. We hear an awful lot of hype about what stem cells can do but in reality there's still a lot of work to do."
Dr. Stephen Minger, Director of the Stem Cell Biology Laboratory at King's College in London, said existing cell therapy treatments for diseases such as Parkinson's and diabetes already provided a model for possible stem cell therapies. Dr. Minger added:
"The main body of stem cell research is people working on embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells or cord blood and all of us are trying to find out the best way to use these cells for clinical applications."
More reports, as if they were needed, of adult stem cells being used to treat patients. This report, from the UK's Daily Telegraph highlights the story of doctors at a London hospital who harvest stem cells for use in repairing fractured bones.
A British hospital has successfully used stem cells to promote healing when fractured bones refuse to mend, saving patients from permanent disability or amputation.
Three patients who had run out of treatment options have handed back their crutches. A total of five out of 10 are making progress but it can take some months for the treatment to begin to work.
Doctors at the Robert Jones & Agnes Hunt Orthopedic Hospital, are harvesting stem cells from the patient's bone marrow, growing them and then applying them to the fracture site where they help broken bone grow again and unite.
Dr. James Richardson, consultant surgeon, said: "Some broken bones just don't heal with conventional treatments and patients can end up on crutches or in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives or be in so much pain that they finally request an amputation.
"With stem cell therapy, we harvest the patient's own bone marrow, purify out the bone producing cells and stimulate them in a special laboratory to make them multiply. Three to four weeks later, the cells are returned to the patient and implanted at the site of the fracture. The stem cells then help to grow new bone and literally 'knit' the fracture site together."
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