The latest updates on new advances in adult stem cell research

Culture of Life Foundation, 815 15th St., NW Suite 1111, Washington, DC 20005, CONTACT: Tara Seyfer, Director of Research, 202-638-5500

August 6, 2002
Adult Stem Cells from Bone Marrow Can Grow Blood Vessels in Eyes

Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA, headed by Dr. Martin Friedlander, have found that adult stem cells from bone marrow can target degenerating cells in the eye (which is a major cause of blindness), and prevent further degeneration. Adult stem cells from bone marrow are known to be divided into two types-ones that later form blood (hematopoietic lineage; called Lin+) and ones that don’t later form blood (non-hematopoietic lineage; called Lin-). The Lin- stem cells that the Scripps team studied were found to contain a population of cells (endothelial precursor cells, EPCs) that turn into endothelial cells, the cells that line blood vessels. When these Lin- stem cells were injected into the eyeballs of newborn mice, they “extensively and stably incorporated” into the newly-forming blood vessels of the retina (the membrane at the back of the eyeball). Also, when EPC-enriched bone marrow stem cells were injected into a line of mice that normally develops retinal vascular degeneration, the cells were able to stabilize the retinal blood vessel system and keep it from degenerating. Dr. Friedlander said that he was “flabbergasted” at the improvement seen. They also tested the EPCs’ ability to target the retina, by genetically-engineering the cells to deliver a particular protein to the retina that is able to stop blood vessel formation (sometimes, overgrowth of blood vessels can cause blindness). When they injected them into the eyes of mice, normal blood vessel formation was halted, without affecting already-established blood vessels. This showed that the cells had delivered the protein to precisely the correct place. Using this technique to introduce reparative genes could be helpful in the future because the patient’s own cells could be used to do so, which would eliminate risk of immune rejection. In addition, these cells could be used to treat eye diseases and disorders that affect blood vessels in the retina. Blindness due to diabetic complications and age-related macular degeneration (loss of vision due to malfunctioning of retinal cells) are two of the leading causes of blindness, which could be possibly treated with these adult stem cells. These cells could possibly also aid in the delivery of drugs to the eye, since they are so adept at targeting blood vessels. “It just blew me away that we could use these cells as magic bullets,” said Dr. Friedlander. “If the blood vessels are destined to deteriorate, the stem cells will completely reverse and stabilize the problem. That was really a surprise — a real pleasant, interesting surprise.”

Sources: Otani, A. et al, “Bone marrow-derived stem cells target retinal astrocytes and can promote or inhibit retinal agniogenesis,” Nature Medicine, September 2002, Published online July 29, 2002, doi: 10.1038/nm744 (http://www.nature.com/nm/) , http://www.nature.com/nsu/020722/020722-13.html, http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020729-67877701.htm, http://www.scripps.edu/news/press/072602.html, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/07/020730075401.htm, http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=97&e=4&cid=97&u=/hsn/20020730/hl_hsn/stem_cells_hold_promise_for_eye_diseases, http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20020729-9999_1m29vision.html and http://www3.cosmiverse.com/news/science/0702/science07290201.html.

Adult Muscle Stem Cells Could Treat Muscular Dystrophy

Scientists at the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and the University of Bonn in Germany have identified a special adult stem cell derived from muscle that has some extraordinarily beneficial qualities. They isolated the cells from mouse skeletal muscle, and tested them alongside a couple other types of muscle cells. They found that the stem cells, which they call MDSCs (muscle-derived stem cells) have some great qualities: (1) they can proliferate over a long period of time without losing their basic karyotype (genetic blueprint); (2) they are multipotential-they can differentiate into muscle, neural, and endothelial cell types, both in vitro (in the lab) and in vivo (in animals); (3) after injection into “mdx mice” (a mouse with a type of muscular dystrophy), the cells transplanted well with very little immune reaction. Further testing of the cells showed that the reason the cells resist immune rejection is probably because they exhibit extremely low amounts of protein markers called MHC proteins, which are usually used by the immune system to detect foreign cells. Their paper states, “Our results suggest that this novel population of muscle-derived stem cells will significantly improve muscle cell-mediated therapies.” It is hoped that the cells could possibly be used for transplantation purposes and to treat muscle diseases such as muscular dystrophy.

Sources: Qu-Petersen, Z, et al, “Identification of a novel population of muscle stem cells in mice: potential for muscle regeneration,” Journal of Cell Biology, 2002, 157(5), pp. 851-864 and http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/07/020704084204.htm and http://www.niams.nih.gov/ne/press/2002/07_03.htm

July 23, 2002
Human Embryonic Stem Cells Not So Invisible or Therapeutic After All

Research by a team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that contradicts a claim of human embryonic stem cell research (hESCR) proponents was published in recent weeks in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a major scientific journal. Their experiments show that a previously-touted notion that hES cells can slip under the surveillance of a normal human immune system as if they were invisible is completely false. They compared hES cells to other cell lines including a non-hES line of cells called HeLa cells, by performing a technique called flow cytometry that utilizes fluorescent-tagged antibodies. This allowed them to analyze the cells for protein markers called MHC proteins. These proteins are exhibited by nearly all known cells, and allow the immune system to detect them and to launch an attack on foreign cells. They found that human embryonic stem cells, just like the other cells they tested, exhibit MHC proteins. The article says, “In conclusion, our results demonstrate that human ES cells can express high levels of MHC-I proteins and thus may be rejected on transplantation.”1 This means that “scientists hoping to use the cells to treat Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, and other maladies will have to worry about transplant rejection.”2 It also flies in the face of the belief by many pro-human ES lobbyists and researchers that human embryonic stem cells are some miracle cells which the human immune system will not detect. It is obvious that, just like most any other type of cell, these cells could provoke an immune system reaction if transplanted into a human body. In addition, the procuring of these cells involves the destruction of human life and reduces human beings to fodder for scientific research. It is sad that this research team performed their experiments with human ES cells, for human beings were killed in the process of obtaining the cells used in their experiments. It ironically proves, to both scientists that are pro-ESCR and are noncommittal about ESCR, that ESCR is not beneficial. It is certainly not beneficial to the human being that is killed to obtain his/her cells, and it would not be beneficial to a transplant patient either. Scientists and clinicians are better off studying and using human adult stem cells, which have been shown in many recent studies to have the flexibility to change into many different types of cells, which is useful for transplantation purposes. Although they also have MHC markers (like most cells), if they were to be transplanted into the same patient from which they were obtained, immune rejection problems could be avoided. Also, adult stem cells are more controllable than human ES or fetal cells, which have been found to grow tumors, or to develop into undesirable types of cells in transplants.

Sources: (1) Drukker, M. et al, “Characterization of the expression of MHC proteins in human embryonic stem cells,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published online before print July 11, 2002 (online # 10.1073/pnas.142298299); print edition: July 23, 2002, Vol. 99, No. 15, pp. 9864-9869 and (2) Vogel, Gretchen, “Stem Cells Not So Stealthy After All,” Science, July 8, 2002 in ScienceNow section online (http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2002/708/2; need subscription)

Washington, May 24, 2002
Neural Adult Stem Cells Alleviate Symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease

Tremors and other Parkinson’s disease symptoms have largely disappeared from a California man since he underwent a procedure wherein doctors obtained stem cells from his brain, grew them in the laboratory, and injected them back into his brain in an attempt to treat his Parkinson’s disease. Michael Levesque and his team at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles performed the work. They removed 50 to 100 cells from the brain of Dennis Turner, a San Clemente, CA man with Parkinson’s, grew them in the laboratory for several months, and then in March 1999 injected about six million of the cells into the patient’s brain. Dopamine, a chemical neurotransmitter, is lacking in Parkinson’s disease patients. With this treatment, there was an initial increase in the man’s brain of dopamine, which leveled off again a year later, to pre-surgery levels. Still, an 83 percent reduction in symptoms has persisted. “It’s not just psychological. His motor improvement is real. And the improvement is beyond the level for placebo effects,” Levesque said. Mr. Turner, the patient, has great praises for the procedure: “Two years ago I couldn’t put my contact lenses in without a big problem. Now it’s no problem. And I don’t have to take any anti-rejection medication because the cells are myself.” Because the cells are derived from the patient himself, such a procedure precludes any need for anti-immune-rejection medication, with its strong side effects. With such a treatment, patients could “essentially grow their own cures from a few starter cells taken from their own brains.” This research shows that human embryos need not be killed in order to treat the diseases of others.

Sources: Weiss, Rick, “Stem Cell Transplant Works in Calif. Case; Parkinson’s Traits Largely Disappear,” Washington Post, April 9, 2002, Page A8;

April 15, 2002
Gene Therapy on Rat Brains Brings About Complete Recovery from Parkinson’s’ Symptoms

Scientists from the University of Florida in Gainesville and Lund University in Lund, Sweden have shown that they can restore motor function in rats with Parkinson’s disease symptoms by delivering corrective genes to specific parts of their brains.

Their findings, reported in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are derived from more than four years of studies, involving nearly 200 rats. Parkinson’s disease, whose symptoms include muscular rigidity, tremors, and postural abnormalities, is characterized by a loss of L-dopa-producing cells in the brain. L-dopa is a molecule that is further converted into dopamine by neurons. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a large role in the coordination of limb movements. The researchers wanted to introduce into the rat brains two genes that code for enzymes that are essential for triggering L-dopa production.

To do so, they packaged the genes into harmless adenoviruses, and injected this ‘package’ (also known as a vector) into the striatal region of the rats’ forebrains. The rats’ brains had lesions in them (induced and characteristic of Parkinson’s disease) which caused rigidity of their limbs and limping. The scientists found that their injection of the vector with genes caused an increase in L-dopa (and thus dopamine) production in the brain, which led to a decrease in Parkinson-like symptoms.

In rats with lesions only one side of the brain, limb impairments were completely reversed. This was assumed to be because there were still some dopamine-producing cells intact in the brain, which facilitated recovery. Even in rats with no dopamine-producing cells intact before treatment, the gene therapy brought about some restored motor function of their limbs. Ronald Mandel, one of the researchers, believes that the therapy has the potential to lengthen the amount of time that Parkinson’s medication will be effective. (Typically, a patient’s response to such medication lasts only about 3 to 5 years, after which side effects begin to diminish the therapeutic value of the drugs.)

“We anticipate gene therapy will offer a way to help patients with Parkinson’s disease live many years longer free of disabling symptoms,” Mandel says. Human trials for safety and efficacy will need to be done, as with all gene therapy techniques. Breakthroughs such as this are proof that immoral embryonic stem cell research does not need to be pursued in order to treat neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s disease.

Washington, Mar. 15, 2002
Transplanted Stem Cells Restore Limb Function After Stroke

Scientists at the Department of Neurosurgery and the Stem Cell Institute at the University of Minnesota have found that transplanted adult stem cells can restore the function of limbs in rats after stroke injuries to their brains. The adult stem cells, called mesenchymal stem cells (MSC’s), were isolated and grown from human bone marrow. They were then transplanted into the brains of rats seven days after they had ischemic strokes (strokes due to local lack of blood). Prior to the transplantation, the rats could not properly use their forelimbs and hind limbs. Weeks after the transplantation, the rats showed significant improvement in limb usage. Further analyses revealed that the transplanted adult stem cells exhibited characteristics of different types of neuronal cells, such as astrocytes, oligodendroglia, and neurons. The findings suggest that stem cells from adult bone marrow could possibly be used to treat stroke injury or other central nervous system injury. “The ability of bone marrow stem cells to differentiate into cells that are typically found in the brain and restore function in laboratory animals with stroke holds promise for people who have experienced a stroke,” said Dr. Walter Low, the principal investigator for the study. Such exciting possibilities with adult stem cells are further proof that embryonic human beings need not be exploited and killed for their embryonic stem cells, to research and treat neuronal injuries.
Sources: Zhao, L., et al, “Human Bone Marrow Stem Cells Exhibit Neural Phenotypes and Ameliorate Neurological Deficits after Grafting into the Ischemic Brain of Rats,” Experimental Neurology, Vol. 174, No. 1, Mar. 2002, pp. 11-20 (http://www.idealibrary.com/links/doi/10.1006/exnr.2001.7853) and http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/03/020305073456.htm

Washington February 15, 2002
Adult Stem Cells From Fat Can Turn Into Cartilage and Bone Cells

Separate studies with scientists at Duke University and with another group of researchers reporting recently in the journal Tissue Engineering have shown that fat cells have the potential to be reprogrammed to turn into bone or cartilage cells. The scientists at Duke University Medical Center presented results at a Feb. 10 annual meeting of the Orthopedic Research Society. They extracted cells from the pad of fat behind the kneecap; this fat tissue is somewhat different from regular fat (adipose) tissue in that it is metabolized much more slowly that regular subcutaneous fat. They focused on cells in the knee pad fat called ‘adipose-derived stromal cells,’ and treated these cells with various mixtures of steroids and growth factors. By doing so, they “were able to induce them to commit to multiple lineages,” such as bone and cartilage cells. In addition, they were able to “grow different cell types from the adult stem cells by controlling their shape in a three-dimensional matrix” of substances like complex carbohydrates. M. Quinn Wickham, who presented the findings, said that the therapeutic potential for tissues grown from these adult stem cells is large and varied. The other researchers, reporting in Tissue Engineering, did experiments where they grew fat cells in the laboratory and varied the composition of the fluids (media) they were grown in. They found that by adding certain components to the media, the fat cells would begin to “mineralize,” and produce certain minerals that are characteristic of bone cells. Both of these studies show that fat cells have the potential to grow into bone and cartilage. This finding could have great promise for use in reconstructive surgery or in replacing damaged tissue. A member of the Duke team, F. Guilak, said, “This is another demonstration that adult stem cells are not necessarily locked into their current fate, and furthermore, we can reprogram them into becoming other cell types.different clinical problems could be addressed by using adult cells taken from different spots throughout the body, without the same ethical concerns associated with embryonic stem cells.”
———————————-
‘Miracle’ stem cell find
December 14, 2001

Researchers have found a type of stem cell which could repair damaged organs without any chance of being rejected by a patient’s immune system. Other scientists have been trying to perfect cloned stem cells as a
way of overcoming the rejection problem.

A type of cell found in the bone marrow of adults is so safe it can be transplanted between species. The mesenchymal stem cells, or MSCs, don’t carry markers on their surfaces which lead to rejection, reports New Scientist. Ray Chiu, of McGill University in Montreal, even managed to successfully transplant them from pigs to rats.

He also said the cells only seem to go to damaged areas once injected, saying: “They turned into heart muscle, blood vessels and fibrous tissue.”

If MSCs live up to their promise there may be no need for the controversial harvesting of embryonic stem cells.

Annemarie Moseley, of Osiris Therapeutics in Baltimore, said: “It does go against our common understanding of the immune system.”
————————————

December 13, 2001:  Adult Stem Cells Cure Sickle Cell in Mice
Washington, DC

Washington, DC — Researchers have cured laboratory mice of sickle cell anemia, the inherited blood disorder that affects more than 70,000 Americans, in an experiment using adult stem cells from bone marrow, genes
and a modified HIV virus. Although the treatment is years away from being tested on humans, experts called the experiment a milestone.

“It corrected the sickling problem throughout the bodies of these mice,” said Philippe Leboulch, a Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientist who led the research team. “All of the
mice were cured permanently.”

Leboulch said additional study is needed before the technique can be tried on humans and the first clinical trial could come in about two years. A report on the study appears Friday in the journal Science.

The disease causes intense pain. It damages the liver, lungs and kidneys and can trigger stroke or infections. There is no cure in humans, and treatment consists of combating the symptoms with antibiotics, blood
transfusions and surgery. A drug, called hydroxyurea, helps control some symptoms in adults, but it has not been approved for children.

About 1.2 million Americans carry one sickle cell gene. They are said to have the sickle cell trait and are not affected by the disease. A person must inherit two sickle cell genes – one from each parent – to have the
disease. A child born to two parents with the sickle cell trait has one chance in four of inheriting the disease.

Sickle cell anemia is most common in people of African heritage. It also is found in people of Greek, Indian and Italian origin and can occur in any race.

“Although much more research is needed before human application, this is a significant achievement that brings us closer to human gene therapy for what is a very serious genetic blood disorder,” said Dr. Claude Lenfant,
director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, one of the National Institutes of Health.

“This is an exciting result,” said Dr. Michel Sadelain of the Memoria Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. “It is an important milestone in gene therapy.”

Sadelain earlier achieved a similar success in mice by correcting the genetic flaw that causes thalassemia, a blood disorder related to sickle cell anemia. In the new study, researchers used two types of mice that are bred to have a blood disease closely resembling the sickle cell anemia disease in humans.

They removed from the mice samples of the bone marrow, which makes blood, and then irradiated the mice to kill the remaining abnormal bone marrow. The researchers mixed with the removed bone marrow a fragment of the HIV virus that had been manipulated to contain a normal red blood cell gene. The virus infected the bone marrow, carrying into the blood-making cells the normal red blood cell gene. The bone marrow was then re-injected into the mice. Once in the animals, the genetically altered bone marrow cells produced normal red blood cells and corrected the sickling disease. After 10 months, the mice were killed and their organs and blood examined. Leboulch said there was no evidence of abnormal blood nor of the organ damage that is common with sickle cell anemia.

The gene therapy technique will not be tried in humans, said Leboulch, until the researchers learn how to safely neutralize the abnormal blood-making gene in patients. Radiation was used in the mouse experiment to kill the animal’s bone marrow, but this would not be appropriate for human sickle cell disease patients, said Leboulch.

Greg Evans of the NHLBI said that research is under way to find a safe way to partially destroy the abnormal bone marrow in patients. The technique would then make room for the genetically corrected bone marrow.

Sadelain said that earlier studies showed that the genetically corrected bone marrow is ineffective against the blood disorder unless most of the abnormal bone marrow is neutralized. Both sickle cell anemia and thalassemia are caused by a failure of a gene that helps to make hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries
oxygen. In thalassemia, the gene fails to make enough hemoglobin.

In sickle cell disease, the gene makes an abnormal hemoglobin that is sticky and stiff. Instead of the soft, doughnut-shaped, normal hemoglobin, the abnormal protein often forms into a distinctive sickle shape with a
sharp point. The abnormal hemoglobin tends to clog small vessels, blocking the flow of blood. This starves tissues of oxygen and can cause damage throughout the body.
———————–

Reporting from the Culture of Life Foundation, 815 15th St., NW Suite 1111, Washington, DC 20005, CONTACT: Tara Seyfer, Director of Research, 202-638-5500

Washington, November 16, 2001

Heart Disease
Human Adult Bone Marrow Stem Cells Used to Repair Heart Damage
Japanese scientists at the Yamaguchi University School of Medicine in Ube, Japan reported some exciting adult stem cell research findings on Nov. 12 to the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2001 conference in Anaheim, California. They had previously done animal experiments with adult stem cells which worked well, and just revealed their new results from an ongoing clinical trial where they treated five patients with heart disease. The researchers obtained bone marrow from the patients’ own hip bones. From this marrow, they “prepared a mixture rich in mononuclear cells, which includes immature cells such as stem cells and the precursor cells of the endothelial cells that line the inner walls of blood vessels.” Then they injected the patients’ hearts with several injections of the mixture. One month after the injections, three of the five patients showed definite improvement in blood flow to the sections of their hearts which had received the injections. It was also found that severe chest pain they had suffered before the injections had disappeared. Although two of the patients didn’t show signs of changes in their blood flow, it was shown that none of the patients had developed detrimental symptoms from the injections. “We found this new treatment to be safe, and we believe it could be an alternative treatment for heart patients who cannot be helped by coronary artery bypass surgery or balloon angioplasty,” said Kimikazu Hamano, M.D., a co-author of the study. This is yet another successful and promising use of human adult stem cells, which should be proof that destructive and immoral human embryonic stem cell research need not be pursued in the quest for treatment and cures for disease.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/11/011114071845.htm

Parkinson’s Disease
Scientists Are Able to Convert Bone Marrow Stem Cells To Brain Cells in Laboratory
Scientists at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia have found that they can convert adult human bone marrow cells into brain cells in the laboratory. The research team’s leader, Dr. Lorraine Iacovitti, reported her team’s findings on Nov. 11, 2001 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego. She says that “The goal [of the work] is to find stem cells that we can differentiate into dopamine neurons to replace those lost in Parkinson’s Disease.” The researchers were able to develop a cocktail of growth factors and nutrients which they could feed to the human bone marrow stem cells. Over time, they found that a particular mixture was able to convert 100% of the bone marrow stem cells into neurons within one hour. “It flew in the face of everything I knew from developmental biology,” says Dr. Iacovitti. The converted cells both look like neurons and contain neuronal proteins. They even found that the cells can convert into different subclasses of neurons. The laboratory is still working on converting them into dopamine neurons, which they think could help Parkinson’s patients. In addition, they are working on the task of keeping the cells differentiated by working with the media in which the cells are incubated. Dr. Iacovitti notes that “The major advantage of using adult human bone marrow stem cells is that each person can be his own donor, meaning they can have an autologous graft of cells without rejection.” Because the cells come from the patient’s own body, there is no risk that the graft will be rejected by their immune system, as could happen if the cells came from another patient or from embryonic cells from another human being. Such encouraging findings should be convincing evidence that researchers need not engage in human embryonic stem cell research, which kills human beings in embryonic form (or utilizes cells from embryos that have been killed).
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/11/011112073405.htm

Washington, October 12, 2001
Alzheimer’s Disease, Brain/Spinal Cord Injury
Bioengineers Use New Microcapsule Protein-Release System to Enhance Neural Cell Transplantation in Rats

Bioengineer researchers at Cornell University have created a unique system for transplanting cells into brains, together with a protein called NGF (nerve growth factor), which enhances nerve cell growth. They created polymer microcapsules which they can fill with the NGF protein. They tried injecting these microcapsules into rat brains together with rat fetal brain cells, to see if they could successfully get the brain cells to attach and grow, and if the NGF would stay localized in the injection area (important because they didn’t want the NGF to spread and cause cell growth in other areas). They found that the NGF did remain in the local area, and that the brain cells produced an enzyme called ChAT (which is a sign that the transplanted cells were starting to grow and function). Future research might test the use and release of other proteins or drugs using the microcapsules. Although these researchers used the microcapsules with rat fetal brain cells, once the procedure is tried in humans, human fetal brain cells or human embryonic stem cells should not be used. A moral route would be to potentially use adult neural stem cells along with the microcapsules, or the microcapsules alone, to promote neuronal growth.

Sources: http://www.eurekalert.com (Oct. 11, 2001

Washington, September 28, 2001
Cartilage Repair
New Treatment for Damaged Cartilage in Knees Using Patients’ Own Adult Cells

Doctors at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Middlesex, England have found a successful new technique for repairing cartilage, specifically in the knees.  Cartilage is known by doctors to be particularly difficult to repair and heal, so this discovery was particularly welcome.  The researchers in England found that their new procedure was successful in more than 80% of the patients involved in a study they’ve performed.  The procedure involves removing healthy cartilage cells from the patient, culturing them in some of the patient’s own blood serum (which contains unique growth agents), allowing the cells to grow for 3-4 weeks, and then placing the cells back into the patient’s damaged knee.  One great aspect of this discovery is that because the cells are from the patient’s own body, they will not be rejected by an immune response, unlike the possibility of this happening with human embryonic stem cells.  This is yet another exciting new treatment in medicine that does not rely upon the immoral usage of human embryonic stem cells for research.
Sources: http://www.spuc.org.uk/news/20010924.htm

Diabetes
Known Gene Discovered to Be Involved in Liver Glucose Production

Researchers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas and at Harvard Medical School have discovered a gene that is involved in the generation of glucose in the liver, a finding that could lead to breakthroughs in diabetes research.  The gene, “PGC-1”, was already known by scientists to regulate the production of a cell component called mitochondria (involved in the production of energy in muscle cells) within cells.  However, it was unknown that PGC-1 has a role in the liver.  Apparently, they found that in rats and mice that were subjected to fasting conditions, PGC-1 expression in the liver increased.  It did the same in rodents that were genetically-bred to have various types of diabetes.  This indicates that PGC-1 is involved in the creation of glucose by the liver.  Normally, the liver provides a regulated stream of glucose in response to the body’s needs.  In Type 2 diabetes, however, glucose production can be abnormally high.  Future studies and potential therapies could use the new discovery to learn how to switch the PGC-1 gene on and off, to treat diabetes. Such therapies and research are even more evidence that human embryonic stem cells need not be studied in research for diabetes or any other disease.
Source: http://unisci.com/stories/20013/0924014.htm

Washington, September 21, 2001:

Adult Stem Cell Research:
Chronic Granulomatous Disease
A three-year-old boy has been cured of a fatal disease by the use of stem cells extracted from his sister’s placenta. Tom Stretch suffered from chronic granulomatous disease, an inherited defect of the white blood cells which would probably have led to his death in his 20s. No suitable bone marrow donor could be found, so doctors at Newcastle-upon-Tyne general hospital in England took stem cells from the placenta of his sister Hanna, who was free from the condition, after she was born last November and transplanted them into Tom. Tom’s parents were due to take him home from the hospital September 18. This news provides yet more evidence of the potential of stem cells derived in an ethical fashion, in contrast to the destructive extraction of stem cells from embryos and so-called therapeutic cloning.
Source:  http://www.spuc.org.uk/ 

Washington, September 07, 2001

Adult Stem Cell Research:
Scientists Identify First “Universal” Stem Cell Marker; Could Revolutionize Stem Cell Identification

Researchers at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis have discovered what they believe could be utilized as a “universal stem cell marker,” a protein or gene that can distinguish stem cells from other cells in the body.  Up until now, scientists have been struggling to find a reliable way to identify stem cells, which can sometimes be difficult to separate from other bodily cells.  Current methods and markers used are not fully reliable, and sometimes identify cells which are not really stem cells.  The Memphis scientists believe they have found a marker that could be absolutely specific for stem cells.  It is a gene called ABCG2/Bcrp1, and their work found that the gene was expressed in several different types of stem cells (including bone marrow and skeletal muscle cells), but wasn’t found on most mature cells.  This is great news, especially in the realm of adult stem cells, because one of the difficulties posed in obtaining numerous adult stem cells from bodily tissue is being able to separate out such cells in an accurate manner from the surrounding mature cells.  This finding should aid scientists greatly in being able to separate greater numbers of adult stem cells with which to perform their experiments and which could be used for clinical therapies.  Such a discovery is yet another reason why researchers need not resort to embryonic stem cell research, with all of its utilitarian ramifications against the human person.
Sources: http://www.biospace.com/news_story.cfm?StoryID=6151515&full=1 and September 2001 issue of Nature Medicine.

Heart Attacks -Adult Stem Cell Research:
Adult Stem Cell Therapy Used To Repair Damage From Heart Attacks

In a major advance against heart disease, a man’s heart was repaired by his own bone marrow adult stem cells recently in Dusseldorf, Germany.  Four days after the patient had suffered a serious heart attack (in which he had lost a quarter of his heart muscle), the operating team removed bone marrow stem cells from his pelvis (a large source of bone marrow) and injected them into the man’s coronary arteries.  Prof. B. Strauer, the doctor who performed the procedure, said that ten weeks after the injection, “the size of the damage has reduced by nearly a third and the capacity of the heart itself has clearly improved.”  The cells had migrated to the damaged areas of the heart and had turned into beating heart cells.  Prof. Strauer claims that, “Stem cell therapy could be more successful than all other previous treatments put together.  Even patients with the most seriously damaged hearts can be treated with their own stem cells instead of waiting and hoping on a transplant.”  He has treated six other patients (aged between 38 and 67) with their own stem cells since March, and after a short time they exhibited  improvement too.  Such findings show that doctors can pursue both effective and moral clinical methods for treating patients, as opposed to resorting to the immoral usage of embryonic stem cells to treat patients.
Sources: Cleaver, Hannah and David Derbyshire; “[Adult] Stem cell therapy repairs a heart”;  Daily Telegraph; 8/25/01; and http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/08/25/wstem25.xml

Cancer – Adult Stem Cell Research:
Umbilical Cord Cells Being Used Effectively to Treat Leukemia

Umbilical cord cells show increased promise of being an effective treatment for leukemia.  Normally, leukemia patients must rely on receiving bone marrow transplants from donors, and the transplant must be a close match or the patient will develop serious immunological problems.  Closely-related donors, such as siblings, have the best chance of being a good match, but many times they don’t match perfectly and the patient ends up being put on a waiting list for receiving a transplant from an unrelated matched donor.  Umbilical cord cell transplants now offer another viable option.  Dr. Mary Laughlin, director of a transplant program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, along with her colleagues at 5 transplant centers, has conducted a study of 68 patients with leukemia or other blood disorders.  Most of the patients received transplants of umbilical cord cells from unrelated donors.  About 90 % of the patients grew new, healthy blood cells from the “mismatched” cord blood cells.  Also, only 20 % of the patients developed severe immunity problems (which is a good statistic compared with the 55% of patients who develop such problems after receiving perfectly matched bone marrow).  It is thought that because the umbilical cord cells are immature immunologically, they adapt better than mature bone marrow cells to the patient’s body, and thus don’t cause as many immunological problems.  Dr. Laughlin says that, “Now even patients who can’t find perfect matches from bone marrow donors might have hope from umbilical cord cell transplants.”  Umbilical cord cells are in abundance, are immunologically flexible, and can be used as a truly ethical form of therapy.
Source: Hesman, Tina; “Blood Bank Seeks Role in Stem Cell Research”; St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Aug. 29, 2001

Spinal Cord Injury/Parkinson’s Disease
Adult Cell Research: Dental Pulp Cells Could Help Treat Spinal Cord Injury and Parkinson’s Disease

Scientists at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden are conducting studies on dental pulp cells, the cells inside teeth, which they hope will lead to possible therapies for spinal cord injury and Parkinson’s patients.  They are closely observing the process of “innervation” (the growth and development of nerves) involved with these cells in order to understand the process better.  They have also conducted experiments with the cells.  When they cultured the dental pulp cells with neurons (“in vitro”; in an environment outside the living body), they found that the dental pulp cells promoted survival and growth of the neurons.  When they grafted dental pulp cells into the spinal cord of rats (“in vivo”; within the living body), they found that the pulp cells promoted neuron survival in the spinal cord.  Dr. Christopher Nosrat, one of the researchers, says that “Conceivably, it one day may be possible to extract a tooth, grow dental pulp cells, and implant those cells into a patient suffering from a neuro-degenerative disease such as Parkinson’s disease.”  Such amazing possibilities, using one’s own bodily cells (and thus minimizing immune rejection), should preclude any researcher from even considering working with embryonic stem cells.
Sources:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/09/010905073926.htm and http://www.idealibrary.com/links/doi/10.1006/dbio.2001.0400/pdf  (Nosrat, et al; “Dental Pulp Cells Produce Neurotrophic Factors, Interact with Trigeminal Neurons in vitro, and Rescue Motoneurons after Spinal Cord Injury”; Developmental Biology; online now at link above and to be published offline in October 1, 2001 edition)

Washington, August 24, 2001: Promising new findings this week in the treatment of spinal cord injury, heart attacks, and skin disorders. All without the need of a single embryonic stem cell!

Spinal Cord Injury Non-ES/Fetal Cell Research:
Promising New Treatment For Partial Spinal Cord Injury

Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel are experimenting with a new therapy intended for patients with partial spinal cord injury. With partial spinal cord injury, the several days immediately following the injury are crucial, because during this time, there is usually further neural damage that occurs in a wave that spreads from the injury site, and can be even more destructive than the initial damage. The goal of the researchers is to find a treatment that will effectively stop this post-injury degeneration. In their recent studies on rats with partial spinal cord injury, they injected the rats post-injury with specific proteins which they had derived from the central nervous system (and which were selected to be able to boost the rats’ immune system). The treated rats showed significant recovery of movement, and their spinal cords contained nerve fibers that appeared substantially healthier than those of nontreated rats (which suggests that the proteins halted further neural degeneration). These results are very encouraging, and counteract (with hard data) the hype from pro-embryonic stem (ES) cell research organizations that ES cells are needed for healing of spinal cord injury. This non-ES therapy is only one of several we’ve reported on in the last few weeks which treat neural injury and disease in a completely moral manner.
Sources:http://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/weizmann/doa_iis.dll/Serve/item/English/1.200.7.5.html and http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010817081453.htm (8/17/01 report)

Heart Attacks Non-ES/Fetal Cell Research:
Heart Cells Divide, Enlarge, and Live Longer With Special Enzyme

Scientists at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston have found a way to increase heart cell division, increase heart cell size, and make heart cells live longer. This is great news for people prone to heart attacks or other heart ailments. The researchers genetically engineered their laboratory mice to produce a specific enzyme called TERT (Telomerase Reverse Transcriptase) in their heart muscles. This enzyme is normally only produced in very young mice, and is involved in the process of chromosome duplication during cell division. The engineered mice continued to produce the enzyme even after they grew older. At first, the mice produced many more heart cells than normal mice. Several weeks later, cell division ceased and the cells grew larger (hypertrophy). In addition, the cells appeared to be more resistant to cell death than normal cells. Usually, the condition of hypertrophy confers a weakness to the heart. With these mice, however, their hearts did not have impaired functioning. One of the scientists in the group, Dr. Michael Schneider, said that the scientists involved believe that adding TERT to an adult heart could offer protection against the type of cell death experienced during a heart attack. In addition, TERT could possibly be added to cells that have been grafted onto an injured heart. This could probably aid in cell growth and protection from cell death. It is just one more example of the exciting research being done without using embryonic stem cells.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/08/010821074944.htm (8/22/01 report) and Oh, et al, “Telomerase reverse transcriptase promotes cardiac muscle cell proliferation, hypertrophy, and survival”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published online August 21, 2001 (www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.191169098 [Need subscription].

Adult Stem Cells Successful in Treating Rare Skin Disorder

A team of doctors at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston recently performed the first known adult stem cell transplant to treat a rare skin disorder called scleromyxedema. The disorder is characterized by waxy, stiff, thickened skin. In the Houston patient, it had progressed so far that the skin on his face had a “cobblestone appearance,” and he could not close his eyelids completely or eat. The doctors first collected stem cells from the patient’s own bone marrow, and then purposely destroyed his immune system with chemotherapy. They then transplanted his stem cells back into his system in order to allow the cells to reconstruct his immune system. Three months after the transplant, the patient’s face does not have the cobblestone appearance anymore, and he can now close his eyes and open his mouth. This is another example of highly encouraging results from adult stem cells in clinical work on human patients.
Sources: Prolife Infonet 8/20/01, #2509; Reuters Health, Aug. 17, 2001; also Feasel, et al, “Complete Remission of Scleromyxedema Following Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation”, Archives of Dermatology; August 2001, Vol. 137, No. 8, pp. 1071-1072.

Culture of Life Foundation, 815 15th St., NW Suite 1111, Washington, DC 20005, CONTACT: Tara Seyfer, Director of Research, 202-638-5500