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Biotech / Medical : Stem Cell Research -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Shawn Donahue who wrote (82)	1/27/2005 5:07:48 PM
From: keokalani'nui	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 495

Please don't politicize this thread with such poorly researched, argumentative garbage. The premise of that piece has pretty much been completely discredited, in time I suspect to meet the author's print deadline. Nature. 2004 May 6;429(6987):41-6. Related Articles, Links Comment in: Nature. 2004 May 6;429(6987):30-1. Adult pancreatic beta-cells are formed by self-duplication rather than stem-cell differentiation. Dor Y, Brown J, Martinez OI, Melton DA. Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard University, 7 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. How tissues generate and maintain the correct number of cells is a fundamental problem in biology. In principle, tissue turnover can occur by the differentiation of stem cells, as is well documented for blood, skin and intestine, or by the duplication of existing differentiated cells. Recent work on adult stem cells has highlighted their potential contribution to organ maintenance and repair. However, the extent to which stem cells actually participate in these processes in vivo is not clear. Here we introduce a method for genetic lineage tracing to determine the contribution of stem cells to a tissue of interest. We focus on pancreatic beta-cells, whose postnatal origins remain controversial. Our analysis shows that pre-existing beta-cells, rather than pluripotent stem cells, are the major source of new beta-cells during adult life and after pancreatectomy in mice. These results suggest that terminally differentiated beta-cells retain a significant proliferative capacity in vivo and cast doubt on the idea that adult stem cells have a significant role in beta-cell replenishment. PMID: 15129273 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

To: Shawn Donahue who wrote (82)	1/27/2005 8:57:39 PM
From: Shawn Donahue	Respond to of 495

UAMS sees blood stem-cell work rise BY NELL SMITH Posted on Thursday, January 27, 2005 URL: nwanews.com The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences performed 633 blood stem-cell transplants in 2004, a number that officials say rivals the top facility nationally for blood stem-cell transplants, M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. A UAMS news release issued Wednesday asserted that UAMS’ 2004 blood stem-cell transplant number was higher than that of any other facility in the country. Officials based that statement on the fact that M. D. Anderson averages about 630 blood stem-cell transplants a year, said Dr. Michele Fox, professor of pathology at UAMS and director of cell therapy and transfusion medicine. A spokesman for the Houston center could not verify the average number late Wednesday or say whether it had ever done more than 633. Still, the high number of stem-cell transplants represents a significant growth in the UAMS program. The Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy, a part of the Arkansas Cancer Research Center where the transplants are performed, had previously been averaging 500 a year, Fox said. Physicians who treat cancer patients sometimes use blood stem-cell transplants to help rebuild infection-fighting white blood cells after chemotherapy. The treatment is especially common for patients with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells in bone marrow. The high-dose chemotherapy used to treat multiple myeloma is toxic for white blood cells made in the bone marrow. A stem-cell transplant, using either the patient’s own stem cells or someone else’s, helps regrow those white blood cells quickly and stave off lethal infection. Fox noted that the blood stem-cell transplants differ from the embryonic stem-cell transplants most people know about. "I try to avoid the term ‘stem cell’ when I can because everyone links it with fetal embryonic stem cells and they get kind of paranoid about killing babies," she said. Blood stem cells are taken from blood or bone marrow, not embryos. To collect the stem cells, blood is drained from a vein or catheter into a cell processing machine. The material is spun to separate the needed cells, which are then removed from the blood. The actual transplant is usually an outpatient procedure that takes about 30 minutes. "It’s just like getting a blood transfusion," Fox said. "No big deal." In some hospitals, blood stemcell transplants have been used to treat solid tumor cancers, such as kidney or breast cancers. "It’s been discovered that somebody else’s cells may recognize the cancer better than your own do," Fox explained. UAMS does not use this form of therapy for solid cancers. Fox believes that while blood stem-cell transplants have been used in cancer treatment for at least two decades, they could offer a promising therapy for a new field known as regenerative medicine. "These same cells that regenerate bone marrow will also regenerate heart muscle, nerve tissue, muscles, liver, bone, cartilage. The list gets longer every day," Fox said. Fox said she believes UAMS’ transplant numbers jumped so significantly in 2004 because she and UAMS colleagues made a number of presentations at a 2003 American Society of Hematology meeting. The expertise they showed there may have spurred doctors across the country to refer their patients to Little Rock, she said. In addition, the Myeloma Institute reduced its waiting time for treatment from two weeks to seven days. For out-of-state patients, Fox said, "We might just as well be in the same city. The patient is being seen here as quickly as they would be seen at a big center in the same town they live in." The institution’s high number could also relate to a practice of treating patients with two transplants usually months apart. The idea, pioneered by Dr. Bart Barlogie, institute director and a professor of medicine and pathology in the UAMS College of Medicine, was to boost the transplant’s effectiveness. "What people noticed years and years and years ago is that you might have a good response to the first treatment, but myeloma would always relapse," Fox said. "So Dr. Barlogie decided that if you know it’s going to relapse anyway, you need to hit it hard upfront." UAMS has been doing double transplants for at least 14 years, she said. "Treating a record number of patients is a significant achievement for the transplant program, as each case further expands our knowledge of how best to treat our patients and brings us closer to one day developing a cure," Barlogie said in a written statement. Fox said the UAMS Myeloma Institute is the largest multiple myeloma center in the world. The first stem-cell transplant to treat myeloma at UAMS was made in 1989. The average survival rate of a myeloma patient used to be two to three years upon diagnosis. Today the median survival rate of patients at the institute is seven years, according to UAMS. Total remission rates for the institute’s patients over the last 10 years have improved from less than 5 percent for those receiving standard chemotherapy to more than 50 percent for patients undergoing both chemotherapy and stem-cell transplants. The Myeloma Institute averages about 50 new patients a month. Patients have come from all 50 states and from 34 foreign countries.