Posted on 09/19/2005 9:07:50 PM PDT by Ronzo
Scientists have used injections of human stem cells to heal spinal injuries in paralysed mice, allowing them to walk normally again.
The research, which was funded by the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, suggests that stem cells could be used to repair spinal damage in people who have suffered damaging accidents or disease, although further studies, including safety tests, are needed before the treatment can go into human trials.
Neuroscientist Aileen Anderson and her team at the Reeve-Irvine Research Centre at the University of California, Irvine, used stem cells taken from the neural tissue of aborted foetuses. When injected into the body, they can develop into any type of nervous tissue.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
But it's a shame that had to use aborted baby stem cells...wonder if they'd get the same results with adult cells?
Why would you inject human cells into mice???
This is questionable stuff.
I am pro stem cell research, but this strikes me as very odd at least, and more likely political plant.
From what I've been reading, they already have. Certain Portuguese and South Korean experiments have had excellent results with real live crippled humans using their own adult stem cells (from the bone marrow, I believe).
Or the cells from cord blood? I've heard the results are more favorable with cord blood than embyonic cells?
Seems a tad odd to me as well.
Perhaps we should use mouse stem cells in humans.
An interesting point...but this is no "political plant"...another article from the Wash. Post goes into more detail, and explains there are companies wanting to inject humans with (human) stem cells within the next nine months:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/19/AR2005091901365.html
No, once it's aborted, a fetus doesn't usually grow into much of anything.
Cross species injections? No No No... My point is that if human cells would work in mice, would not the reverse be true. (I know better) This is complete crap.
Yep, that is my understanding also.
Earlier this year, Hans Keirstead and his colleagues, also at the University of California at Irvine, reported that rats with disabling spinal injuries could walk nearly normally again after getting injections with human embryonic, rather than fetal, cells developed by Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, Calif.Those cells were initially harvested from days-old human embryos and then cultivated under special laboratory conditions that forced them to become immature oligodendrocytes. Once injected into injured spinal cords, the cells matured and wrapped themselves around injured neurons, which often lose those natural coverings as a result of injury-induced inflammation, leaving even intact neurons unable to function properly.
How does one "harvest" days old cells from a human embroyo? It this embroyo something they grew in a petri dish in the lab?
It appears they didn't even bother to try. Go figure.
Sorry for the spelling but I got kind of heated on the nonsensicalness of this
I agree.
I heard that cord blood worked well, too. Not only that but there's a large, easily accessable supply of it.
Sadly, I have no expertise in this area, and can't find anything (yet) that would discount these findings.
However, you're point is well taken, and remains on the table: how does a mouse benefit from being injected with HUMAN cells, whether or not they are from an embroyo, fetus, or whatever...
One would think that at best, they simply would die.
However, if some sort of genetic engineering were performed on these cells before injection, there is a high probability that it would work. There is nothing in this article that states these cells came DIRECTLY from a human, without any modification. Rather, one gets the impression that they were somehow modified before injection, though the source was definately human.
Which brings up another question: if these cells were in fact modified somehow, then could not the same thing be done with stem cells taken from adults???
Or why didn't they just use a mouse fetus? Wouldn't that have been more practical?
This "discovery" doesn't pass the smell test.
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