Paralyzed mice helped by human stem cells

BREITBART.COM - Just The News:

"Injections of human stem cells seem to directly repair some of the damage caused by spinal cord injury, according to research that helped partially paralyzed mice walk again.

"The experiment, reported Monday, isn't the first to show that stem cells offer tantalizing hope for spinal cord injury _ other scientists have helped mice recover, too."

"...

"'Much more research must be done before testing stem cells in people with spinal cord injuries,' cautioned Anderson. 'One question is how soon after an injury cells must be administered to have any effect _ no one knows how nine days in a mouse's life correlates to the post- injury period for a person. Also, the mice were bred to avoid immune system destruction of the human cells, and suppressing a person's immune system because of similar transplant rejection risk poses big problems.

"'The last thing we want to do is take someone who's living a productive life _ if confined, we all understand that _ and make them worse,' said Anderson, who said the work also shows the need to study all types of stem cells. 'The exciting part is the potential is there.'"

With all due respect to the Associated Press and its medical writer Lauran Neergaard, work on injecting stem cells into humans to treat spinal cord injury has been going on for years. I posted a story about Dr. Carlos Lima in Portugal several months ago and just now found a story in Paraplegia News dated March 2003 about human clinical trials ongoing in Portugal, China and Australia.

Dr. Lima's work is particularly interesting since he is getting significant results taking stem cells from the patient's own nose to implant at the spinal cord injury site. This avoids both the ethical controversy surrounding fetal stem cells and the possibility of immune system rejection.

For me, the most exciting part of the mouse research reported in this AP story is the observation that the implanted stem cells appeared to be rebuilding myelin (the protective sheath around nerve cells) as well as neurons. Some members of my family suffer to varying degrees from Charcot-Marie-Tooth, an inherited degenerative disease in which the myelin deteriorates beginning in the hands and feet leading to loss of function. It doesn't directly shorten lifespan. My father was almost 83 when he died of cancer, but for many years he had been unable to oppose his thumbs to his fingers to grasp things. He could drive a car, but he couldn't button a shirt. A way to rebuild myelin could help a lot of people suffering with CMT.