STEM CELLS THE ANSWER TO ORGAN FIXING?

Canadian scientists have discovered that injecting bone marrow stem cells into diabetic mice allowed them to regrow damaged organs within two weeks. These same scientists feel that the possibilities for humans just got better since the stem cells behaved as scientists have been predicting they should. The surprising thing to scientists were that ALL the damaged organs were regenerated - not just the one that the stem cells were injected into.

Read more about it in a June 23, 2003 article at NationalPost.Com.



From NationalPost.Com:

Stem cells may be able to regenerate human organs, scientists say

Margaret Munro
CanWest News Service
Monday, June 23, 2003

CALGARY - Canadian scientists have discovered that stem cells can trigger regeneration of severely damaged organs in animals, a feat that suggests it may be possible to trick the human body into healing itself.

"It certainly raises intriguing therapeutic possibilities," says Dr. Mickie Bhatia, head of the team at the Robarts Research Institute in London, Ont.

The scientists injected bone marrow stem cells into diabetic mice, who were cured or back to normal within seven to 14 days.

But the "most amazing" finding, Bhatia said, is that the stem cells triggered the rodents' damaged pancreases to regenerate on their own.

He believes the same thing may work in humans.

"There is no reason to think it wouldn't," he said, cautioning that much research must be completed before it could be tried as a therapy for people with diabetes or other diseases.

The scientists injected the bone marrow stem cells into diabetic mice thinking the new cells would replace the rodents' damaged insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.

They were so surprised to see them trigger regeneration that they repeated the experiment several times.

"This is a completely unprecedented property of bone marrow stem cells," Bhatia said.

Stem cells are believed to have the potential to turn into many types of cells in the body. There has been much talk of growing them in labs and using them to repair damage in the brain, heart, liver and other tissues.

The new findings "are very, very cool" and open up a whole new area to investigate, Bhatia said.

It is not clear how the stem cells triggered the regeneration in mice, but the scientists suspect the stem cells may produce potent molecules.

Bhatia is keen to find that molecular mechanism, saying it may be possible to produce the molecules and use them to heal organs and tissues.

"We could just administer the molecule. You wouldn't have to do cellular therapy."

Diabetes research using the more controversial human embryonic stem cells could begin this fall with an Edmonton surgeon expected to go ahead with his new experiments.

Stem cells are able to divide almost indefinitely, producing such specialized cells as beating heart cells, insulin-producing pancreatic cells or nerve cells. They are found in small embryos, designed by nature to turn into every type of cell in the body. They do that in the womb as an embryo grows into a baby, but they also can be manipulated in the lab to create whatever cell type is needed for a specific treatment.

That raises a tricky ethical debate over whether doctors should be allowed to destroy the life of a five-day-old embryo to potentially save a patient's life.

The alternative is using what initially were believed to be less flexible stem cells in the tissues of children or adults, including skin, bone marrow, muscle, brain tissue, umbilical cords and baby teeth. So-called "adult" stem cells typically produce only the major specialized cell types of the particular tissue or organ in which they are found.

Human stem cell research has been held up as Parliament reviews new laws that would regulate such research.

Bhatia now wants to find out if bone marrow stem cells can trigger regeneration of other tissues such as kidneys.

In the mouse experiments, the scientists destroyed the rodent's insulin-producing pancreatic cells with chemicals. The animals soon developed symptoms of severe diabetes. Then the scientists inserted bone marrow stem cells from healthy rodents into the diabetic mice.

The injected cells were tagged with a fluorescent green marker, which allowed the scientists to follow their fate. The cells did not end up in the pancreas as expected. Instead, the organs repaired themselves.

Within days, the animals' insulin and blood-sugar levels returned to near-normal.

"The bone-marrow stem cells interacted with the pancreas and basically triggered the pancreas to regenerate on its own," Bhatia said.

Diabetic mice that did not receive stem cells became sicker and had to be killed.

(Calgary Herald)

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