I'M SORRY...AM I MISSING SOMETHING? "WORLD'S FIRST?"
WHAT ABOUT THE HUNDREDS, IF NOT THOUSANDS OF CARDIAC ADULT STEM CELL PATIENT THAT HAVE BEEN TREATED ALL OVER THE WORLD? WHEN IS THE US GOING TO WAKE UP TO THE FACT THAT THEY ARE YEARS BEHIND IN STEM CELL TREATMENTS?-dgWorld's First Cardiac Adult Stem Cell Patient and Physicians Discuss Clinical Trial
By: PR Newswire
Jul. 23, 2009 09:06 AM
Infusion Procedure Performed on July 17th
LOUISVILLE, Ky., July 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- University of Louisville physicians performed the world's first cardiac adult stem cell infusion procedure at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, KY, on July 17, 2009. The procedure is part of the first FDA-approved clinical trial using adult cardiac stem cells to treat heart disease.
via
World's First Cardiac Adult Stem Cell Patient and Physicians Discuss Clinical Trial | SYS-CON INDIA.
May 26, 2009
Stem Cells Transplanted From Marrow Into Heart May Improve Heart's Performance
ScienceDaily — The Cardiology department and the Area of Cell Therapy of Cordoba hospital Reina Sofia are carrying out clinical tests with patients who have suffered from a severe heart attack. With the implantation of the patient's stem cells, the heart regenerates thus improving its wall motion, that is, its cardiac performance.
via http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090526094616.htm
May?!
AGAIN!?
CATCH UP ALREADY!!
While I applaud the work, I think I'm going to start sounding like a broken record...
(Let's jump back a week to May 20, 2009)
CATCH UP!! – Stem Cells MAY?? Offer New Way to Treat Blocked Arteries – Forbes.com
In
ALL ARTICLES,
STEM CELLS IN THE NEWS on
May 20, 2009 at
6:21 pmOnce again, US research and especially the US media (Forbes) is years behind the rest of the world on stem cell progress!
The headline in Forbes reads, “Stem Cells May Offer New Way to Treat Blocked Arteries.” Here is where the rest of the world stands on cardiac and arterial treatment with stem cells.
1998 – Dr Doris Taylor takes stem cells from the thigh of a rabbit, injects them into scar tissue in the animal’s heart and repairs the damaged muscle. The research was published in Nature Medicine.1998-1999 – French researchers transplanted muscle cells into a human heart.2000 – Human studies and trials using adult stem cells to regrow muscle tissue, including cardiac muscle tissue, are performed in many countries around the world.2002 – Dr Taylor herself witnessed in Rotterdam the first patient in the world to get stem cells injected through a catheter into the wall of the heart. Encouraging results began to come in—improved ejection fractions, reduced diameters, thicker muscle tissue.2004 – The first-ever commercial stem cell treatment center in the world was regrowing human cardiac muscle tissue in hundreds of patients in Thailand! Stem cells are recognized as “smart,” going to where they were needed most, creating micro-vessel bypasses around blockages that were existing, those that were removed previously and in areas where stents were implanted.
2005 – Dr Taylor rinsed rat hearts with detergent until the cells washed away and all that remained was a skeleton of tissue translucent as wax paper. She then injected the scaffold with fresh heart (stem) cells from newborn rats. Four days later, “We could see these little areas that were beginning to beat. By eight days, we could see the whole heart beating.” The experiment, reported in the journal Nature Medicine, marked the first time scientists had created a functioning heart in the lab from biological tissue.2009 – Present day. There are currently dozens of stem cell treatment centers around the world who are using adult stem cells to treat cardiac disease in human patients and regrow both cardiac and skeletal muscle tissue and more.
catch up!
Once again, US research and especially the US media (Forbes) is years behind the rest of the world on stem cell progress!
The headline in Forbes reads, "Stem Cells May Offer New Way to Treat Blocked Arteries." Here is where the rest of the world stands on cardiac and arterial treatment with stem cells.
1998 – Dr Doris Taylor takes stem cells from the thigh of a rabbit, injects them into scar tissue in the animal’s heart and repairs the damaged muscle. The research was published in Nature Medicine.1998-1999 – French researchers transplanted muscle cells into a human heart.2000 – Human studies and trials using adult stem cells to regrow muscle tissue, including cardiac muscle tissue, are performed in many countries around the world.2002 – Dr Taylor herself witnessed in Rotterdam the first patient in the world to get stem cells injected through a catheter into the wall of the heart. Encouraging results began to come in—improved ejection fractions, reduced diameters, thicker muscle tissue.2004 – The first-ever commercial stem cell treatment center in the world was regrowing human cardiac muscle tissue in hundreds of patients in Thailand! Stem cells are recognized as "smart," going to where they were needed most, creating micro-vessel bypasses around blockages that were existing, those that were removed previously and in areas where stents were implanted.
2005 – Dr Taylor rinsed rat hearts with detergent until the cells washed away and all that remained was a skeleton of tissue translucent as wax paper. She then injected the scaffold with fresh heart (stem) cells from newborn rats. Four days later, “We could see these little areas that were beginning to beat. By eight days, we could see the whole heart beating.” The experiment, reported in the journal Nature Medicine, marked the first time scientists had created a functioning heart in the lab from biological tissue.2009 – Present day. There are currently dozens of stem cell treatment centers around the world who are using adult stem cells to treat cardiac disease in human patients and regrow both cardiac and skeletal muscle tissue and more.CATCH UP!!
Stem Cells May Offer New Way to Treat Blocked Arteries - 05.19.09, 04:00 PM EDT
Injections into heart restore blood flow in small study
TUESDAY, May 19 (HealthDay News) -- Injecting bone marrow cells into the heart's muscular wall restored blood flow to hearts with blocked arteries for which conventional treatments had proven ineffective, Dutch physicians have reported.
"I think this is very good news for patients who are at the end of the line and have no options left," said Dr. Douwe E. Atsma, an interventional cardiologist at Leiden University Medical Center and an author of the study, which appears in the May 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The 50 people in the study, 43 of them men, were experiencing angina, or severe chest pain, because of blockages in their heart arteries. All had undergone several artery-opening procedures, such as angioplasty or bypass surgery, to restore blood flow, but such measures would no longer help them, Atsma said.
Half of the participants received injections of cells taken from their own bone marrow, and the others received inactive cell injections. After three months, the responses were varied, with some participants reporting complete relief and others with partial benefits.
"The most important thing is that the amount of ischemia [artery blockage] was halved" in those given the marrow cells, Atsma said. "The amount of tissue with ischemia was reduced, heart function improved significantly in a small way and their grades of quality of life were higher."
Two earlier and smaller trials of bone marrow cell therapy for
heart disease had produced conflicting results, Atsma said. "We are the largest trial to date and the first to demonstrate a decrease in ischemia," he said.
The results were so good, Atsma said, that the participants who had gotten the dummy injections have since been given bone marrow cell therapy, and "we now consider it an option for patients in the same condition," he said.
The study excluded people with
heart failure, which occurs when the heart muscle has become too weak to pump blood properly. But Atsma said that a trial of bone marrow cell therapy for people who have blocked arteries as well as heart failure is planned.
The bone marrow cell injections help restore blood flow by promoting the creation of new blood vessels, Atsma said, but it's not clear how this happens. "It could be that the cells that are injected become part of the vasculature, the blood vessels," he said. "Even better, the injected cells may secrete proteins that stimulate angiogenesis, formation of blood vessels. Or it might be a combination of those two things."
Whatever the reason for the benefit of bone marrow cell therapy, "we are fairly enthusiastic, considering that these patients had no alternative," Atsma said. "They had all the surgery and angioplasty they could have."
Dr. Amit Patel, director of cardiovascular regenerative medicine at the University of Utah, described the finding as "definitely a step forward in the treatment of chronic angina." But he had some cautionary comments.
It was a small study, with just 50 participants, he said, adding that "to make it a more reproducible therapy, you would have to do at least a couple of hundred patients."
Also, the follow-up period was relatively short, at three months, he noted. "Something positive happened, but you would have to follow these patients further to see how long it would last," Patel said. Future studies to determine whether there would be an overall improvement in heart function would also be welcome, he said.
Doris Taylor, director of the University of Minnesota Center for Cardiovascular Repair, also had qualified praise for the results.
"The good news is that it is more mechanistic in that it gives some insights into perfusion," she said. "It reinforces the evidence that bone marrow cells are safe and effective. It also reinforces the prevailing wisdom that it is not a home run. The results are positive, but it is not the panacea we hoped it would be."
To further the baseball analogy, Taylor said that "for the people who feel better, I would consider it a double."
More studies are needed to learn about the value of cell therapy "across the complete spectrum of cardiovascular disease," she said. "We need to understand what we need to do differently. I hope these data provoke that conversation."
via
Stem Cells May Offer New Way to Treat Blocked Arteries - Forbes.com.
Pfizer is pumping
$100 million into its international stem cell development program.
They are going to us
embryonic stem cells and see if they have any potential in
treating cardiac muscle.
They want to make drugs from the stem cells.
- $100 million
- into a science that is at worst, a dead end for creating treatments and at best, will not produce treatments for 20-50 years.
- to develop drugs (instead of using the stem cells themselves)
- for a disease that has been treated successfully with adult stem cells since early 2000
So what if embryonic research has been 100% fruitless (in regard to generating treatments) for well-funded and government supported scientists around the world for the last 11 years.
So what if Dr James Thomson, father of embryonic research said about embryonic research:
“…embryonic stem cells are not being used in any clinical applications yet, while alternatives such as adult stem cells figure in scores of therapies.”So what if Dr Oz said on national TV "the stem cell debate is dead," recognizing the lack of potential in embryonic stem cells to produce cures.
So what if Ian Wilmut, who led the team that cloned Dolly the sheep, abandoned his license to attempt human cloning, saying that
the researchers “may have achieved what no politician could: an end to the embryonic stem cell debate.”So what if Dr. Bernadine Healy, director of the National Institutes of Health under the first President Bush, wrote in U.S. News & World Report that these recent developments “in the first six weeks of Obama’s term,
several events reinforced the notion that embryonic stem cells, once thought to hold the cure for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and diabetes, are obsolete….. In fact, adult stem cells, which occur in small quantities in organs throughout the body for natural growth and repair, have become stars despite great skepticism early on.”Pfizer forges ahead with dead science.
$100 million...money well spent.
from
http://repairstemcell.wordpress.com/2009/03/21/2793/original article:
http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/pfizer-pumps-100m-stem-cell-research/2009-05-08