Human stem cell therapy in 2006?

[CBL4]

Ronald Bailey at Reason.com talked with Woo Suk Hwang the South Korean who lead teams that produced the first cloned dog and the first cloned human embryos.

Before his presentation, I talked briefly with Hwang and asked him when we might see therapies derived from human embryonic stem cells. Hwang smiled and told me that he expected to start transplanting cells derived from cloned stem cells into patients by the end of next year. He expects that the first patients will be a person with a spinal cord injury and another with Parkinson's disease. He will treat them with cloned cells that will be perfectly matched to those specific patients. Of course, lots can go wrong with the early development of biomedical treatments, and Hwang might be a tad overoptimistic. However, considering his results so far, Hwang may actually succeed in using human embryonic stem cells as a treatment. "I promise that our medical researchers are working non-stop," concluded Hwang.

So saying there has not been a single trial of an embryonic stem cell therapy may be a lot like saying in 1902 that "heavier than air flight is impossible." It's true until it's not.

http://www.reason.com/links/links091505.shtml

On a less optimistic side note:

Speaking afterwards, Hwang's American collaborator, Gerald Schatten from the University of Pittsburgh, agreed that cloning lines of diseased stem cells instead of relying on animal research could "vastly accelerate" research on many diseases. However, Schatten noted that creating such cloned human stem cell lines in his home state of Pennsylvania is a felony. "It's amazing, said Schatten, "that we criminalize this work. Imagine if instead of one lab in Korea there were a dozen, or even a hundred labs, fighting to make sure we all live longer and healthier lives."

CBL

 

[geni]

Steam cells (taken from adults) have already been used to attempt to treat Parkinson's disease. Mind you considering what happened last time cells were put into the brains of Parkinsons sufferes they are going to need to be very confident to get this past an ethics comitte.

 

[CBL4]

Stem cells (taken from adults) have already been used to attempt to treat Parkinson's disease.

I did not realize there had be a previous attempt. Do you have link? I think this will be a different (and hopefully better) method.
From the article:

Hwang noted that with cloned stem cells we would be "treating our bodies with our own perfectly matched cells," thus avoiding the problem of immune rejection that bedevils conventional organ and tissue transplants

Does this sound like it might solve the problems in the previous attempt?

CBL

 

[geni]

I did not realize there had be a previous attempt. Do you have link? I think this will be a different (and hopefully better) method.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/?id=STEMCELL.CB2

From the article:
Does this sound like it might solve the problems in the previous attempt?

CBL

That no. The problem wasn't stoping the body from rejecting the cells but controling them once they were there. The case I'm refuring to didn't use steam cells at all but embryonic dopamine neurons. I seem to recall it worked fine in the short term. In the long term the side effects were not good but most of the info is in journals

 

[casebro]

Are we mixing our adjectives and dangling our Zygotes?

Seems some of these quotes use "Embryonic stem cells" in the question, but use "Cloned stem cells" in the response...

We know where embryonic ones come from- either aborted , or made by IVF, right?

The quoted expert is a cloning expert, so my guess is his "cloned" and "Identical to the patients" means that the patients own stem cells were cloned, then implanted, right? Where is the moral dilemna here? Aren't we permitted to use our own bodies to heal our own bodies? I could sure use some muscle stem cells, clone only the ones with good mitochondria please.

 

[geni]

Re: Are we mixing our adjectives and dangling our Zygotes?

Seems some of these quotes use "Embryonic stem cells" in the question, but use "Cloned stem cells" in the response...

We know where embryonic ones come from- either aborted , or made by IVF, right?

The quoted expert is a cloning expert, so my guess is his "cloned" and "Identical to the patients" means that the patients own stem cells were cloned, then implanted, right? Where is the moral dilemna here? Aren't we permitted to use our own bodies to heal our own bodies? I could sure use some muscle stem cells, clone only the ones with good mitochondria please.

You are confusing cloneing with cultureing.

 

[casebro]

Quote from above:
Hwang noted that with cloned stem cells we would be "treating our bodies with our own perfectly matched cells,"

Sounds like Hwang is using the patients own cells. The cloning would be to eliminate the genetic defects within the cells: use the good halves of two cells to make one defect-free cell. Soo. no embryos involved? Or would he use an embryonic cell from which the nucleus is removed, 'fertilize' it with the patients own nucleus, thereby making new stem cells with healthy mitochondria, plus whatever it is that makes them 'universal' or 'stem' cells?

I guess I better Google Hwang, the snippets here don't have as much info as I'd like.

 

[geni]

Or would he use an embryonic cell from which the nucleus is removed, 'fertilize' it with the patients own nucleus, thereby making new stem cells with healthy mitochondria, plus whatever it is that makes them 'universal' or 'stem' cells?

Yes that is what he would do.