Here is the rub. Since the cells needed for replacement of authentic human dopamine neurons that migrate to the proper location express particular properties, these authors wanted to know those specific properties. If they are identified, they could grow large numbers of cells in a culture system and use them on multiple patients. This is akin to what is done with some human embryo lines used to make antibodies. In other words, perhaps only a few human embryos would have to die to bring a greater good (their view and not mine). The idea would be to engineer large numbers of them.
The other paper shows that a specificity exists between the nervous, immune and blood systems. Without a precise match, some cells will not migrate appropriately no matter what. If I am reading this correctly, the second paper makes the results of the first paper more difficult to implement because "just the right circumstances must prevail for a successful implantation." This may mean that one could have the perfect cells created in a culture dish, but they won't work if the patient's body does not support the implantation appropriately and to the correct degree.
As in all things, these are baby steps. It is much better to see them trying to understand this in animals then to promising that it will work in humans in a couple of months. That is honest at least.
September 09, 2004
The “Wrong” Cure
Adult stem cells get the shaft.
By Wesley J. Smith
Members of the liberal media elite have become rather choosy when it comes to advocating stem-cell cures for degenerative medical conditions. To these commentators, cures using adult stem cells just aren't the "right" cures. For stem-cell therapy to really count, it has to come from embryos. Indeed, even the most astonishing research advances using adult cells are ignored by these arbiters of public policy as if they never happened. And since liberal elites dominate public discourse in the stem-cell debate, the American people remain generally unaware of these astonishing scientific advances.
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Amazingly, the ideological fervor in favor of using nascent human life in stem-cell treatments is so intense that it prevents even liberal media elites who suffer from these diseases from embracing emerging treatments that use adult cells. Michael Kinsley, the editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times, is a puzzling case in point. Kinsley has Parkinson's. One would think he would be extremely interested in the successful experiment involving fellow Parkinson's patient Dennis Turner, who five years ago received an 83 percent reversal of his symptoms after a treatment using his own brain stem cells. Kinsley should also find great hope in the results of another human trial in which five Parkinson's patients, treated with a natural body chemical known as glial cell-line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF), improved so significantly that three regained their senses of taste and smell.
excerpt
http://www.nationalreview.com/smithw/smith200409090835.asp