I found the following:
January 14, 2005
U.S. Stem Cell Surgery is Possible
Related to a topic that we wrote about previously, we get now an explanation as to why no U.S. Medical Centers use adult stem cells for spinal cord repair or other procedures, such as the ones the team at the Lisbon Hospital de Egas Moniz are currently doing....
Naomi Kleitman, PhD, program director for the National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health said that she doesn't believe there is any obstacle to doing such a trial if one were proposed... her reservations, shared by many others are though that the Lisbon procedure "doesn't have a great deal of preclinical data," such as animal experiments, showing the procedure is safe and effective.
She said future research, for instance, needs to address whether cells extracted from the nose harbor germs that might produce diseases after they are transplanted.
Both Dr. Carlos Lima of Lisbon's Hospital de Egas Moniz and consultants working on stem cell science with him at Lisbon's Ecbio biotechnology firm say their work shows that stems cells they harvest from the upper reaches of the nasal cavity don't harbor germs.
Doug Engel, chairman of cell and developmental biology at the University of Michigan Medical School, also said he believes autologous adult stem cell procedures are safe. "I have no issue with patients being hurt," he said Monday. "Whether or not it will be beneficial, I think, is an open question."
Dr. Steven Hinderer, specialist-in-chief at the Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan, which is helping doctors in Lisbon conduct basic scientific studies of stem cells, said he hopes to apply by April to the federal Food and Drug Administration for approval to begin autologous spinal cord autograft procedures in Detroit in 2006
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