Groundbreaking Stem Cell Surgery in London

12th Apr 10

Source: Family & Life

Doctors carried out groundbreaking surgery to rebuild the windpipe of a 10-year-old British boy with his own stem cells. If the procedure succeeds, they say it could bring a revolution in regenerative medicine. The operation, which lasted almost nine hours, took place at London’s Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital last month.

Doctors injected stem cells from the boy’s bone marrow into the fibrous collagen “scaffold” of a donor trachea (windpipe). Then they implanted the organ, which had first been stripped of its own cells, into the boy.

Over the next month, doctors expect the stem cells to start transforming themselves into internal and external tracheal cells. The boy, whose identity is a secret, is reportedly doing well and breathing normally. Because they are derived from his own tissue, there is no danger of the newly grown cells triggering an immune response. In an ordinary transplant, doctors would suppress the patient’s immune system with drugs to prevent rejection of the organ.

The new procedure was a big step forward from the pioneering surgery done in Spain two years ago on 30-year-old mother of two Claudia Castillo, the first person ever to receive a transplant organ created from stem cells. She received a section of tracheal airway rebuilt from stem cells, but using a much more complex and costly process.

Prof Martin Birchall, head of translational regenerative medicine at University College London, said, “This procedure is different in a number of ways, and we believe it’s a real milestone”. The Irish Times. March 23.

Ireland and Stem Cell Research

Pro Life Campaign and Family and Life host Stem Cell Experts in Dublin

Source: Pro Life Campaign

In an important visit to Ireland, co-hosted by the Pro-Life Campaign and Family and Life, Professor Robert George of Princeton University and Professor William Hurlbut of Stanford University were in Dublin last week meeting with politicians, academics and pro-life supporters to discuss the need for protection of human life at its earliest stages of development and to make the case for ethical stem cell research that does not involve the destruction of human embryos

Professors George and Hurlbut met with members of the Dáil and Seanad and addressed academics and students in the Royal College of Surgeons, DCU and UCD. On Friday evening, they addressed several hundred pro-life supporters in the Davenport Hotel where they outlined to the audience the scientific and philosophical arguments underpinning a respect for human lives from the moment of fertilisation. Professor William Hurlbut , a professor in Human Biology at Stanford University explained the application and potential of adult stem cells in particular the procedure by which pluripotent stem cells (adult stem cells with the capacity to differentiate into different germ layers) can be used in a way that emulates embryonic stem cells. The significance of this is that no embryonic human being need be used for research and at present non-controversial adult stem cell research is having more success at treating diseases. Professor Robert George who is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University picked through the popular arguments used to de-humanise the embryonic human being and explained why the embryonic human life is deserving of full protection of society and the law. The event was chaired by Senator Rónán Mullen.

The three-day visit of the Professors to Ireland was a great success and Professor George was interviewed on Today with Pat Kenny on the morning of Friday 5th March.

Scientists' Advance Further Renders Embryonic Stem Cell Research Obsolete

Scientists have made a major breakthrough using the process known as direct reprogramming that further renders embryonic stem cell research obsolete. Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have succeeded in transforming mouse skin cells directly into functional nerve cells.

With the application of just three genes, the new cells make the change without first becoming a pluripotent type of stem cell -- such as an embryonic stem cell. That is a step long thought to be required for cells to acquire new identities.

"We actively and directly induced one cell type to become a completely different cell type," said Marius Wernig, MD, assistant professor of pathology and a member of Stanford's Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. "These are fully functional neurons. They can do all the principal things that neurons in the brain do."

Bioethicist Wesley J. Smith also had good things to say about the ethical progress. "Please note–this is not an adult stem cell success. It is direct programming from one kind of cell directly into another," he cautions. "Still much work to do before it is demonstrated that the technique can be used in human clinical work–some scientists express doubts–but a great step forward. Good ethics do produce good science," he writes at his blog Secondhand Smoke.

Wernig is the senior author of the research, which will be published online January 27 in Nature.