Successes from non-embryonic stem cell research mount

A report from South Korea of a paraplegic woman walking six weeks after undergoing a transplant with stem cells from umbilical cord blood is only part of a mounting list of successful therapies that are not dependent on destroying embryos.

On the same day Hwang Mi-Soon, 37, took steps for reporters in Seoul with the aid of a walker, American and European studies were published that showed umbilical cord blood –- and the stem cells it includes -– could save the lives of many adults with leukemia who cannot find bone marrow donors, The New York Times reported.

Meanwhile, recent reports have provided evidence in human trials of a cure for urinary incontinence using a patient’s own stem cells, as well as results in experimental research with lab animals that gave hope adult stem cells might treat heart damage, cancer and eye disease.

Stem cells are the body's master cells that can develop into other cells and tissues, building hope of treatments for numerous afflictions. They may be found in such non-embryonic sources as bone marrow, umbilical cord blood, fat and placentas. The procurement of stem cells from such sources does not harm the donor.

Extracting stem cells from a human embryo is a different matter. It results in the destruction of the embryo, which is normally about a week old.

Supporters of embryonic stem cell research claim that this line of study has the most potential for creating cures, but that is not evident in the priorities of the multi-billion-dollar biotechnology industry, which has invested many times more in adult stem cell research. Also, embryonic stem cell research has experienced multiple failures, including the worsening of Parkinson's symptoms in one human test group and a tendency to produce tumors in laboratory animals.

Research on stem cells from non-embryonic sources, meanwhile, has produced more than 40 treatments -– and the positive results keep coming in.

“These successes point to the promise of adult stem cells for therapeutic ends,” said C. Ben Mitchell, bioethics consultant for the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “Congress should superfund adult stem cell research, making embryonic stem cell research unattractive to scientists.”

Increases in funding for such research should occur not just because the results are more promising but because of its “ethically superior” nature, Mitchell said.

“Every effort should be made to exploit these sources of stem cells,” he said. “They are uncontroversial morally, but killing embryos for their stem cells cannot be justified ethically.

“We favor the advancement of science and the development of therapies, but subjecting human embryos to vivisection is not an advance, but a digression of science into biotechnological cannibalism,” said Mitchell, associate professor of bioethics at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in suburban Chicago.

The federal government provided more than $190 million in funding for non-embryonic stem cell research in 2003, according to the White House. Meanwhile, $24.8 million was set aside the same year for embryonic stem cell research under President Bush’s policy, which permits funds only for stem cell lines in existence before he instituted the restriction in 2001.

While the federal government withholds funds for research that destroys embryos, some states are in a race to fund the practice. California’s voters approved in November a proposition that legalizes and underwrites embryonic stem cell research, as well as therapeutic cloning, with up to $3 billion in state bonds over 10 years. Advocates for embryo-destructive research in Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Illinois are promoting funding plans to keep their states from falling too far behind California.

They have no one to exhibit as a benefactor of research using embryonic stem cells, however. Advocates of non-destructive research have no such handicap. Lupus, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, Crohn’s disease and diabetes are among the ailments that have been successfully treated with non-embryonic stem cells.

Hwang Mi-Soon is one of the most recent witnesses to the power of stem cells that do no require the demise of another human being. South Korean researchers introduced her and the remarkable results Nov. 25, describing hers as the first published case of a person with a spinal cord injury to be successfully treated with stem cells from umbilical cord blood, the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency reported.

“We have glimpsed at a silver lining over the horizon,” said Song Chang-Hoon, a professor at Chosun University’s medical school and a member of the research team, AFP reported. “We were all surprised at the fast improvements in the patient.”

The researchers transplanted stem cells from umbilical cord blood into the damaged part of Hwang’s spinal cord Oct. 12, according to The Korea Times. Within three weeks, she began to take steps with the aid of a walker, Song told reporters. Hwang had not walked since her legs were paralyzed in an accident 19 years before.

At the news conference, she got up from her wheelchair and shuffled a few paces with tears in her eyes, AFP reported. “This is already a miracle for me,” she said, according to AFP. “I never dreamed of getting to my feet again.”

The results were similar, however, to those revealed in July in Washington, D.C., for two young American women. Susan Fajt, from Austin, Texas, and Laura Dominguez, from San Antonio, began walking with braces after receiving transplants with their own stem cells from pioneering Portuguese surgeon Carlos Lima. He transplanted stem cells from the olfactory tissue between the nose and brain to the location of the injuries to their spinal cords. Fajt was paralyzed in her lower body and Dominguez from the neck down from separate car wrecks in 2001.

In another account of a cure for paralysis, Brazilian doctors reported they used stem cells from a paralyzed woman’s bone marrow to restore quickly her ability to walk and talk, according to a Nov. 19 AFP article.

Maria da Graca Pomeceno, 54, suffered a brain hemorrhage that left her paralyzed on one side of her body, but doctors in Rio De Janeiro transplanted the stem cells five days afterward. While Han Fernando Dohmann warned tests were needed on other patients, the director of Rio De Janeiro’s Pro-Cardiaco Hospital said, according to AFP, “I would say that we have entered a new era in treating this condition.”

Here is another one. I have a friend whose brother-in-law is doing this with success.

Stem cells improve heart function of seriously ill heart failure patients

DALLAS, April 22 – Injecting a person’s own stem cells directly into heart muscle appears safe and useful in treating end-stage heart failure, according to a rapid track report today from Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Rapid track articles are released online early because they have major clinical impact or represent important basic science discoveries.

“This is one of the largest series of stem cell-treated patients reported so far and perhaps the first to inject stem cells directly into the heart,” says senior author James T. Willerson, M.D., president of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and medical director and chief of cardiology at the Texas Heart Institute. “If our findings are confirmed in larger trials, this procedure could lead to an effective treatment for severe heart failure, and perhaps to a new form of gene therapy.”

The innovative study involving 21 Brazilian patients was conducted by researchers from the Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital in Houston, and the Hospital Procardiaco and the Federal University, both in Rio de Janeiro. Emerson C. Perin, M.D., Ph.D., and Hans F. R. Dohmann, M.D., led the Brazilian site investigations.

Heart failure is the inability of damaged heart muscle to pump enough blood to serve the body’s needs. About 550,000 new cases of heart failure are diagnosed each year in the United States, according to the American Heart Association. The disease caused about 51,500 deaths in the year 2000.

Stem cells are at an early stage of maturation and can become specific types of cells, such as heart muscle. Willerson and his colleagues began investigating their use as a potential treatment for heart failure about eight years ago.

“We reached the point in our studies where we were certain that, in animals, stem cell transplants were safe and improved the function of the heart and its blood flow,” Willerson says.

After receiving approval from the Hospital Procardiaco ethics committee and the Brazilian National Research Ethics Council, the researchers began the trial in end-stage patients.

“These patients were desperately ill,” Willerson says. “They had a relatively high risk of dying, and had no other forms of therapy available because their heart failure was so severe.”

Fourteen patients received an average of 15 injections containing about two million stem cells each. Seven other patients served as a comparison, or control group. Both groups received the same medical care and monitoring.

The treated patients received a type of stem cell called a bone marrow mononuclear cell, drawn from their bone marrow about four hours before their procedure. These cells carry a “marker” protein on their surface called CD34, which enabled the researchers to identify them.

Researchers chose the cells bearing CD34 because they are believed to have a high probability of becoming blood-vessel cells.

The procedure involved threading a catheter through an artery, into the left ventricle (the heart’s main pumping chamber), and “mapping” specific sites of muscle damage. Then stem cells were injected into these areas.

After two months, the treated patients had significantly less heart failure and angina, and were more able to pump blood than the untreated patients. The treated group also tended to do better on treadmill tests. At four months, the treated patients had a sustained improvement in pumping power and ability to supply blood to the body.

The reason for such improvement remains uncertain. “Either these stem cells became new blood vessel and new heart muscle cells, or their presence stimulated the development of one or both,” Willerson suggests.

None of the treated patients had serious problems such as sustained irregular heart rhythms, heart attack or death during or soon after the procedure. All patients went home after three days.

Two patients died during the follow-up period. A control patient died two weeks after entering the study, and a treated patient died 14 weeks into the trials. Their families refused permission for autopsies to determine the causes of death.

“We studied a small number of patients, and we will need to study a much larger number in many medical centers to identify the benefits and risks that might exist,” says Willerson.

The researchers plan to expand the trial in Brazil, and to begin studying the experimental procedure in Houston soon. They also plan to look for other types of adult stem cells that might prove beneficial in heart failure.

“And then we plan to use these stem cells as a carrier to deliver new genes to failing hearts,” Willerson says. “We are working on that in the laboratory.”

Other co-authors are Radovan Borojevic, Ph.D.; Suzana A. Silva, M.D.; Andre L. S. Sousa, M.D.; Claudio T. Mesquita, M.D., Ph.D.; Maria I. D. Rossi, Ph.D.; Antonio C. Carvalho, M.D., Ph.D.; Helio S. Dutra, Ph.D.; Hans J. F. Dohmann, M.D., Ph.D.; Guilherme V. Silva, M. D.; Luciano Belém, M.D.; Ricardo Vivacqua, M.D.; Fernando O. D. Rangel, M.D.; Roberto Esporcatte, M.D.; Yong J. Geng, M.D., Ph.D.; William K. Vaughn, Ph.D.; Joao A. R. Assad, M.D.; and Evandro T. Mesquita, M.D., Ph.D.

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