A company claims to have made safer reprogrammed stem cells.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
By Emily Singer
PrimeGen, a small biotech company based in Irvine, CA, says that it has solved one of the major hurdles in using reprogrammed stem cells for human therapies. Last year, scientists announced that they had successfully created embryonic-like stem cells from adult cells, circumventing the ethical and technical hurdles associated with embryonic stem cells. But the method used viruses to deliver genes, raising concerns over cancer risk.
According to an article in Forbes,
PrimeGen claimed Tuesday it had circumvented this problem. Instead of genes, it uses unspecified carbon-based "delivery particles" to insert four proteins into cells to stimulate the reprogramming process. This caused some of the cells to revert to being much like embryonic stem cells, PrimeGen said. PrimeGen said it has done the experiment with retinal, skin and testicular cells.
"Our goals are ambitious--we believe with this therapy, we can be in clinic in 2010," said PrimeGen president John Sundsmo in an interview. He said he couldn't release details on what the delivery particles are until the company finalizes an agreement with a corporate partner.
However, some scientists are skeptical. Rather than being published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, the findings were released during a brief presentation at a stem-cell industry conference in New York.
According to Forbes,
Many outside scientists said they weren't familiar with the work and weren't quite sure what to think. "Until the work goes through [peer-review], it would be difficult to evaluate," says James Thomson, the researcher at University of Wisconsin, Madison, who created the first embryonic stem cells in 1998. George Daley, of Harvard University, said he was "pretty suspicious of publication by press release."
Nonetheless, "if this is real it really is a significant step," says Arnold Kriegstein, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at U.C.-San Francisco. "They could be on to something."
Comments
solar nano on 03/01/2008 at 6:08 AM
9
Stem cells are capable of dividing, renewing themselves and also give rise to specialized cell types. Stem cells can be obtained from many sources such as embryo, fetal, umbilical cord blood, bone marrow, muscle or peripheral blood. The adult stem cells are the stem cells found in mature tissue. Stem cells are capable of producing a small range of differentiated cell lineages appropriate to their location.
Bangkok Heart Hospital is now treating 97 patients with heart failure and patients with damage heart muscle from blockage of the coronary artery using angiogenic cell precursor produced from a patient's own peripheral blood. The treatment is in collaboration with Theravitae Ltd. and the University of Pittsburgh. The patient will have a medical history taken and physical examinations as usual. A number of blood tests will be screened for the blood concentration, infection e.g. hepatitis, HIV, bacteremia and general health e.g. liver and kidney function. The Six-minute walk test is used to assess the physical status of the patient before and after surgery. The magnetic resonance imaging of the heart (CMR) will be used to assess the heart muscle viability. If the patients are eligible for the therapy, a 250 cc of autologous blood will be collected from the patients and it will be then sent to the laboratory for cell separation and expansion. These processes take about 1 week. Then the final cell product will be sent back to the Bangkok Heart Hospital for administration.
Once implanted, the stem cells have several potential effects. They work by forming tiny blood vessels that help bring more blood to the heart, by turning into new heart muscle cells in scarred areas of the heart, and by acting as “beacons” that alert the body to activate its natural mechanisms to heal damaged areas in the heart.
The cardiac surgeon will make a small hole at the left side of the chest wall. The thoracoscopic camera will be placed though a small hole into the thoracic cavity to assist with the procedure. Basically the cells will be injected directly into the cardiac muscle where the damaged heart muscle is located by the magnetic resonance imaging of the heart.
Cells are delivered either by surgically or through a catheter depending upon the suitability of an individual patient.
To date, the cell therapy from our institution showed that this cell therapy is feasible and improved the function of the damaged heart muscle in all cases. This stem cell is capable of generating new vessels and perhaps new heart muscles. This new area in medicine and rapidly evolving field needs more understanding and research. Bangkok Heart Hospital is proud to contribute in this work.
This is stem cell therapy using your own stem cells from your blood and regrowing them. What does it take to start extending lives with what is now a proven reality in Thailand, and make it become a reality in the United States, as well?
If you want to shoot holes in this, aim the gun at your own heart, not the hearts of all those other unfortunate people out there with damaged heart muscles. Promote this vital therapy. The heart you save could be your own.
http://www.bangkokheart.com/en/medicalservices_keep7.asp