The Good News Just Keeps On Coming: Adult Stem Cells Treat MS and Arthritis in Mice
As we celebrate the creation and potential of induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, adult stem cell research continues to bear fruit in animal and human studies. The latest is a truly exciting find out of Stanford University: Blood stem cells taken from a donor with a healthy immune system effectively treated multiple sclerosis and arthritis in mice. From the story in the Telegraph:
Thousands of patients with arthritis and multiple sclerosis are given new hope today by scientists who have developed a way to alter the immune system.
Both conditions are caused when the immune system becomes faulty and attacks the body. Scientists have discovered that by injecting stem cells, the body's building blocks, taken from a healthy donor into the patient they can effectively transplant the donor's immune system and cure the condition.
Until now, such a transplant would have been possible only by giving the patient aggressive treatments such as radiotherapy to wipe out the faulty immune system before carrying out a bone marrow transplant to provide new cells. But under the new system patients would be treated with a toxin to clear out the old immune system before being injected with healthy stem cells that would form a new immune system.
The procedure has been performed only on mice but the researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine in California said the "benefits are potentially huge" for humans and could be used to treat MS and rheumatoid arthritis.
The human cloning research advocate Irving Weissman, who is also controversial for wanting to create mice with human brains, is the moving force behind this research. Good on him. Here's some more from the story:When the team transplanted new, blood-forming stem cells into the mice, they became attached to the bone marrow and established a new blood and immune system. In this way, stem cells can be taken from a donor and implanted into a person with a good tissue match who has an auto-immune disease, such as multiple sclerosis, so that the new immune system will no longer attack the nerves of the body. First, the researchers need to do more animal testing and then to develop a way to carry out the same kind of surgical strike on human blood-forming cells.That last bit is worth noting because it demonstrates, once again, the utter falsity of animal liberationists' ideologically-driven contention that humans receive no benefit from animal research.
Labels: Adult Stem Cells. MS
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 11:16 PM
10 Comments
10 Comments:
You continue to be confused about the significance of results with adult stem cells.
When a hematopoietic cell makes blood cells, it's not an adult stem cell miracle. They're just doing what marrow cells have done ever since transplantation was developed in the 1960s. Blood stem cells making blood is nothing special.
The neat discovery here is the utility of immune reprogramming, and adult stem cells are only peripherally involved. They certainly aren't transdifferentiating which is the whole point of the ESC vs ASC divide, they are differentiating into their target cell groups just as one would expect. You made a similar error when covering the same kind of immune reprogramming with type one diabetes a few months ago.
Also your coverage of the iPS cell discoveries is totally paranoid and incautious. iPS cells are not a cure-all yet, especially as long as they're using retroviruses. This vector is incompatible with human research ever since it started giving kids in the SCID trials leukemia. And that was with 1 retroviral insertion, not 4. It's also of note that this discovery was the result of the understanding of SCNT, and would have been impossible without study of ESC.
Finally, it's ironic that after all that time bashing ESC you describe the iPS cell as turning lead into gold. Are we finally admitting ESC are the gold standard?
No, I am not. I am saying the scientists said it was the gold standard. If so, we don't need to spend billions and years trying to perfect human cloning.
Some of the guys that have been making an appearance on this website... childish.. absolutely childish... Please leave your arrogant and pedantic attitudes from our sights. Thanks.
Ricardo: Everybody is welcome here unless they engage in vitriol, slander, or lie. I have only thrown one person off the site because he wanted people with whom he disagreed--including me--to die, and said so repeatedly.
People can handle attitude.
eh guess you just have more patience than i'll probably ever have :) heard it comes from ageing... i'll find out ;)
"Heard it comes from aging:" Well, that would explain it in my case!
I had some problems with this article. I know, I'm a nit-picker, but thass jus' how I am.
It's rheumatoid arthritis that's an autoimmune disease. Osteoarthritis is just wear-and-tear, right? I think the OA people are the ones who are 1 in 5. My daughter has a touch of RA, possibly due to lots of antibiotics when she was little. She appears to be outgrowing it, thank God. RA is a very bad disease but some people are more affected than others. For those who are less affected, it might well be preferable to continue treating their disease conservatively.
Because "clearing out the old immune system" with a toxin rather than radiotherapy isn't really a breakthrough, is it? It's still very dangerous and unpleasant, and therefore reserved for really bad cases. I'm not clear that this is really much different from the bone marrow transplants, AKA stem cell treatments, that are being done now.
Laura, it isn't really different. This is an example of adult stem cells doing their normal job. Interesting, but not revolutionary.
Ricardo, I just pointed out that the research that Wesley misrepresented as worthless for the last few years is what gave us the information to figure out reprogramming. SCNT in particular. Without the ESC research we would never have obtained the molecular clues to determine which four genes out of thousands, to combine in combination for this effect.
I fail to see how what is childish, about this other than your inability to substantively address the perfectly valid point.
"how what is childish"?
Lol! Words of advice to Mark. Learn to read and put things in context first... second... lose the attitude problem and maybe.. just maybe you'll get a decent conversation here. Were you that desperate to elicit a response?
:) Smiley Faces! :)
MarkH: You are the misrepresenter. I never wrote that ESCR was "worthless." Indeed, I said repeatedly that the argument was over ethics, not science.
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