There's an excellent article/interview on MercatorNet (a website based in Australia and New Zealand) on adult stem cell research vs. embryological stem cell research. The interview is with an American physician and researcher. I left a comment on the website about my own autologous stem cell transplant.
MercatorNet - Adult stem cells still trump embryonic
Martin Evans, last week awarded the Nobel prize for medicine, is rethinking his retirement plans. The discovery of embryonic stem cells in mice was groundbreaking, but creating "knock-out" mice to isolate and identify particular genes earned him and his colleagues the career-crowning prize. When the beaming "father" of stem cell research proclaims, "We will have the therapeutic medicine without the embryos. And it’s not a matter of if, but when," one wonders why he seems not to acknowledge that there are already existing stem cell cures and therapies for an impressive number of conditions, including sickle cell anaemia, and various cancers... without the embryos.
The interview portion of the article is with Dr. Alan Moy, CEO of Cellular Engineering Technologies (CET)
MercatorNet: Dr Moy, what led you to step out of the safe world of government funded research at the University of Iowa and to add exponentially to your work load as a private-practice physician and CEO of an emerging bio-tech company, to found the JP2SRI?
Moy: Part was circumstance and the other was identified need for JP2SRI.
My company, CET, had developed the methods to isolate just about all of the major adult stem cells and stem cells from placenta and cord blood. These stem cells are approved for pre-clinical research and not for clinical use. Clinical research is outside the scope of CET. A company like CET is looking at short-term investments and clinical adult stem cell research requires a long-term horizon.
Adult stem cell research is not conducted by many scientists because scientists do not have access to adult stem cells because it requires significant resources (recruiting patients, collect tissues, storage, processing and growing stem cells). This is a daunting task which is a barrier for scientists. So CET provides that work so that scientists can work on adult stem cell research.
Presently JP2SRI works to advance adult stem cell research by providing select researchers with adult stem cells at no charge from CET. These scientists that we collaborate with do not perform embryonic stem cell research.
MercatorNet: Virtually everyone has heard of stem cells, but few are aware of the very basic distinction between embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells sources...
Moy: Adult stem cells offer these advantages: no ethical controversy, none to minimal risk of immune rejection, and reduced cost and time to harvest and grow up an initial stem cell line from adult tissue than from embryonic sources. They have some potential disadvantages: restricted ability to become more diverse tissue cells, and -– although an advantage in terms of genetic stability, they have a restricted lifespan in culture. Stem cells derived from human embryos offer these advantages: they can be maintained in culture for a long time and they have wide diversity. But, they have their problems: genetic instability, rejection potential, ethical controversy, difficult to culture and expensive and laborious, and they form tumours.
MercatorNet: Autologous stem cell therapies have taken off like a rocket, producing results impacting a wide range of diseases. Cardiology has been notably affected by adult stem cell therapies -– surgeons are promising new, living heart valves for children with heart defects. A recent news item featured a story about a child with an otherwise hopeless blood disorder, infantile osteopetrosisa, treated successfully with T-cells from his father. Why the hype over embryonic stem cells? Will it ever lead to real cures?
Moy: It's a big leap for embryonic scientists to promise that embryonic stem cells will lead to cures. There are too many scientific, ethical and business hurdles that have to be overcome for embryonic stem cells to be considered a therapy that will be adopted by industry. You have to clone to overcome rejection and cloning has never been accomplished in humans or primates. In addition, you have to overcome to tumour formation.
The bottom line is that they are over-excited by a behaviour observed in a Petri dish, and several more steps have to be proven before embryonic stem cells can be considered promising.
Embryonic stem cells are not well designed for large scale production, unlike adult stem cells -- so there are significant cost and manufacturing constraints. There are major ethical hurdles that prevent them from being adopted by the public. If you somehow could clone and eliminate the tumour risk, 70 per cent of the public is against cloning. This restricts the market for such companies to jump into such commercial activities. Finally, cloning is not a solution for treating a genetic disorder like juvenile diabetes.
MercatorNet: So why the focus on funding embryonic stem cell research?
Moy: Because the media and the most vocal scientists talk up embryonic stem cell research. This has nothing to do with reality.
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