Non-Embryonic Stem Cell Research Therapies Treat Blindness, Heart Disease
By Gudrun Schultz

Beneath the ethical controversy, media hype and funding battles over the use and destruction of human embryos for stem cell research lies a rapidly-growing body of research leading to successful medical treatments, using non-embryonic stem cells obtained from adult donors or harvested from umbilical cord blood at birth.
           
Adult stem cell research has been largely neglected by the mainstream media in North America, with little to no coverage of significant advancements in the field. The push for embryonic research has dominated the public focus and led to an increasing emphasis on the rapid replication and diversification properties of embryonic stem cells. Supporters argue that the characteristics of cells taken from embryos are necessary for the success of stem cell research, claiming the slower replication of adult cells and the limits of cellular expression are unworkable impediments to the use of the cells. Embryonic stem cell research has thus far been unsuccessful in treating any medical condition, however, while adult stem cells are already being used to treat a variety of illnesses and disease. In addition to freedom from ethical concerns, the use of adult cells does not lead to the rejection problems and tumor production that has plagued embryonic stem cell treatment attempts.
           
Experimental therapies have used non-embryonic cells to treat spinal injury patients and leukemia in children. In a recent breakthrough in the treatment of heart attack victims, research teams have found that injecting adult stem cells obtained from a patient’s own bone marrow, when injected into the patient’s artery within hours following an attack, causes the damaged heart tissue to regenerate. Human trials on volunteer heart attack patients are underway in two British hospitals.
           
Treatment using adult stem cells restored the sight of a British woman blind for two and a half years after acid was thrown in her eyes at a club one night, media coverage in April 2005 reported. The pioneering surgery undertaken by ophthalmic surgeon Sheraz Daya and his medical team at the Centre for Sight at Queen Victoria Hospital in East Sussex  allowed Deborah Catlyn, and multiple other patients, to see clearly once again.
           
The procedure uses adult stem cells to cure blindness caused by damage to the cornea. Stem cells, which occur naturally in the eye, are removed from donors (or the patient) and grown into sheets of cells in a laboratory. The sheet of cells is then placed over the eye, where the cells fuse to the eye and repair the damaged cornea. The donor cells appear to trigger the patient’s own cells to regenerate the eye’s surface.
           
Dr. Daya, in an interview with the Times, said, “The technique not only works, but there was no donor tissue there. That is what really blew our minds. The cells appeared to have been shed from the eye and replaced by the patient’s own, much more hardy, cells.”
           
A new therapy to treat lower-back pain with adult stem cells taken from the patient is moving toward clinical trials at the University of Manchester in the UK. Developed by award-winning Dr. Stephen Richardson, of the University’s Division of Regenerative Medicine in the School of Medicine, the treatment uses cells taken from adult bone marrow that are then persuaded to develop into the cells that form the gel-like tissue cushioning spinal disks. Once grown, the cells are embedded within a natural collagen-based gel and implanted in the spine through a small incision. While the treatment still has years of testing ahead, supporters say it shows great promise for future therapy for victims of low-back pain.
           
Recent studies into human liver regeneration have successfully produced enough tissue growth from stem cells to form “mini livers”, dime sized sections of human liver tissue that scientists expect to be useable for human trials within two years. A UK research team successfully grew the first artificial human liver tissue in a laboratory, using stem cells taken from umbilical cord blood. Newcastle University researchers Nico Forraz and Colin McGuckin induced the cells to differentiate into liver cells, which grew into “mini-livers”. Although the research is still in the preliminary stages, the technique will eventually be used to repair damaged livers, and is potentially capable of growing entire artificial livers for future use in transplants.
           
Other successful research projects include the regeneration of tooth tissue, and the re-growth of human pancreatic cells that may lead to future treatment of human diabetes. Both of these United States studies have been conducted on animals --researchers are now working toward human trials.
           
A U.S. study published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine Jan. 15 showed researchers have successfully used stem cells taken from the bone marrow of adult mice to grow blood and bone marrow cells, restoring immune systems destroyed in mice by exposure to radiation.
           
The groundbreaking research, carried out by a team at the University of Minnesota and supported by four different scientific journals, holds great potential for use in human transplants in the future by increasing cells available for bone marrow transplant patients, among other therapies.
           
Most recently, a study from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine and Harvard University found stem cells in amniotic fluid that appear to combine the best features of both adult and embryonic cells. An abundant source of stem cells with the ability to multiply rapidly and develop into numerous forms of tissue would make it increasingly difficult to justify the destruction of human embryos to obtain stem cells, reinforcing arguments against a disturbing practice that has shown little positive results in research efforts.

Gudrun Schultz is editor for LifeCanada News.