Posted on 11/30/2006 7:57:54 AM PST by Mrs Ivan
A radical new treatment could bring relief to millions of back pain sufferers, scientists said today.
A team at the University of Manchester has developed a stem cell cure that could totally regenerate damaged tissues.
Low back pain affects up to 80 per cent of the population at some point, and in many cases becomes persistent, eventually leading to debilitating pain.
It is usually caused by the degeneration of the tissue between the discs in the back, which becomes dry and no longer able to support the body.
Current treatments rely on strong painkillers or risky surgery, and aim to reduce the pain rather than curing the problem.
The Manchester team's treatment regenerates the damaged tissue using stem cells from the patient's own bone marrow.
"Stem cells ... will be grown in culture and our patented method of differentiation will be applied," said Dr Stephen Richardson, who developed the technique. "They will then be embedded in a gel which can be implanted into the patient."
The team hope to start large pre-clinical trials next year, and say a commercial product could be available soon after.
Researchers say the new treatment could lead to NHS cost savings as patients could be treated quickly and effectively without extended hospital stays.
Only one treatment should be needed in a lifetime and there would be no need for continuous treatments with painkillers and physiotherapy.
In the UK alone the combined figures for lost productivity and health-care costs due to low back pain run in the tens of millions of pounds a year. This will only increase as the population ages.
The actual results of stem cell research will never be known. Any negative outcomes such as enhanced tumor generation will be hushed up for the sake of progress. Just like Nazi Germany
Good to know. This isn't Mengele-science.
DrMike
Has it? I didn't know that.
Enhanced tumor generation is a hallmark of embryonic "cures", not that there are any yet.
FReepers can rejoice at this unalloyed good news from the UK.
" Any negative outcomes such as enhanced tumor generation will be hushed up for the sake of progress"
there are plenty of folks who would GLADLY trade increased tumor risk for a chance to end back pain, though i think an issue is going to be folks who had/have a damaged/torn disc but now have actual nerve damage from years of irritant chemicals leaking from the disc onto the adjacent nerve roots.
Another ADULT stem cell treatment on the horizon.
Thanks for posting this. I know someone who will be glad to find about this.
http://getprolo.com/
a better alternative that works now!
IF there is ever a second story about it. There seem to be a lot of breakthroughs reported in the British Press, and frequently.
Yet, for some reason they never seem to get beyond the original press release.
I have such a terror of socialized medicine that my aluminum foil hat mode kicks in and says, "Press releases are easier than actually providing care. It gives people hope, in the same sense that buying a lottery ticket does."
And just what would the waiting period be for such treatment, should it ever really materialize?
I believe you are mistaking this for embryonic stem cells. These stem cells are taken from the person's own bone marrow.
These stem cells do not involve embryos, sperm or egg. This there is no morality issues. Also, the tumor risk for using your own stem cells is very low or nonexistant.
There has never been a successful treatment using embryonic stem cells. Hopefully there never will be.
Completely foolish statement for a doctor.
This press release issued by Eurekalert says that a University of Manchester researcher has developed a treatment for lower back pain using the patient’s own stem cells, which could replace the use of strong painkillers or surgery that can cause debilitation, neither of which addresses the underlying cause.
Dr Stephen Richardson, of the University’s Division of Regenerative Medicine in the School of Medicine (FMHS), has developed the treatment; and in collaboration with German biotechnology company Arthrokinetics and internationally-renowned spinal surgeons Spinal Foundation are hoping to enter pre-clinical trials next year. It is expected to rapidly yield a marketable product which will revolutionise treatment of long-term low back pain.As a result Dr Richardson has been named Northwest Young Biotechnologist of the Year (sponsored by Nature) at the North West Development Agency/Bionow awards.
Low back pain (LBP) affects a large proportion of the adult population at some point in their lives and in many of these cases it is persistent, eventually leading to debilitating pain. The majority of the cases of LBP are due to degeneration of the intervertebral disc (IVD), the soft tissue which separates the vertebrae in the spine and protects them from damage; it is the flexibility of this tissue that allows movement of the spine (bending, twisting etc). The IVD is comprised of a central gel-like tissue (nucleus pulposus or NP), surrounded by a fibrous ring of tissue (annulus fibrosus or AF). Over time the NP becomes dry and fibrous and cannot support the weight of the body, which means the disc becomes damaged and painful and this is the source of the LBP in many people.Currently, treatments address the symptoms – mainly pain – using a combination of painkillers, physiotherapy or surgery, removing tissue to relieve the pain or fusing the vertebrae above and below the painful disc level together to remove the pain, although this also stops movement at that disc level. None of these options is ideal as they only treat the symptoms, not the cause, and are of limited long-term success. The treatment Dr Richardson is developing uses a cell-based tissue engineering approach to regenerate the IVD at the affected level. This is achieved through the combination of the patients’ own mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and a naturally occurring collagen gel that can be implanted through a minimally-invasive surgical technique. MSCs are a population of progenitor cells found in the bone marrow of adults which can differentiate into many different cell types in the body, including bone, cartilage, fat and muscle cells. Dr Richardson found that for several reasons he could not use cells from the IVD itself and thus spent a number of years developing a method of producing NP cells from MSCs. He, together with colleagues, now has an international patent on this method. It was the development of this method, combined with the establishment of collaborative links with a company to supply the gel and a surgeon to develop the implantation technique, which won Dr Richardson the award.
Dr Richardson explained: "Once we have extracted the bone marrow from the patient and have purified the MSCs, they will be grown in culture and our patented method of differentiation will be applied. They will then be embedded within a gel which can be implanted back into the patient through an arthroscope.
"The gel used, produced by Arthrokinetics, is based on a collagen that is a component of many tissues within the body, a totally natural product that is similar to the gel already used clinically for the treatment of articular cartilage defects. The ability to reimplant this within the body with an arthroscopic procedure – similar to an endoscopy, in which a camera is inserted through a narrow tube into the body – means that there is only a very small scar on the back and the patient could hopefully return home on the same day or the day after the surgery. Once implanted the differentiated MSCs would produce a new NP tissue with the same properties as the original and would both treat the underlying cause of the disease and remove the painful symptoms."The treatment has massive implications for the future of LBP treatment – with substantial NHS cost savings as patients could be treated quickly and effectively without any need for extended hospitalisation. In addition, as both the cause and the symptoms are treated, only one treatment should be needed in a lifetime and there would be no need for continuous treatments with painkillers and physiotherapy. The patient would therefore benefit and there are also implications for productivity in the workplace as a large number of work hours are lost every year due to sickness leave for low back pain. In the UK alone the combined figures for lost productivity and health-care costs due to low back pain run in the tens of millions of pounds a year and this will only increase as the population ages.
Dr Richardson said: "I am delighted to have won the award. The judges acknowledged the importance of the work and the advances we had made in the treatment strategy. In particular they noted that with all the hype surrounding MSC-based treatments of many diseases, the fact that we were hoping to start pre-clinical trials next year was a massive step towards finally realising the potential of MSCs in a clinical environment.
"They also commented on the difficulties I had overcome in finding an appropriate gel to complement the MSC differentiation work and in drawing in both commercial interest from the company which produces the gel and clinical interest from spinal surgeons who saw the potential of the treatment." Dr Judith Hoyland, head of the Intervertebral Disc Regeneration and Spinal Disease research group, said: "Dr Richardson has strived hard to overcome the numerous hurdles involved in such a complex process. As a result of his tireless dedication to the development of a clinically-viable tissue engineering strategy for treatment of low back pain, he was the ideal candidate to receive the young biotechnologist of the year award. I hope that it will spur him on to develop his full potential as a biotechnologist and become a credit to the burgeoning Northwest biotechnology sector."I can tell you from my own experience of back pain that I wouldn't care if they came from the stem cells of dogs if it would help the pain.
I'll fly again! I can put on my cape and fly again! Up, up, and away! Oh, yeah, I forgot, I'm dead! Darn!
A University of Manchester researcher has developed a treatment for lower back pain using the patient’s own stem cells, which could replace the use of strong painkillers or surgery that can cause debilitation, neither of which addresses the underlying cause. Dr Stephen Richardson, of the University’s Division of Regenerative Medicine in the School of Medicine (FMHS), has developed the treatment; and in collaboration with German biotechnology company Arthrokinetics and internationally-renowned spinal surgeons Spinal Foundation are hoping to enter pre-clinical trials next year. It is expected to rapidly yield a marketable product which will revolutionise treatment of long-term low back pain. As a result Dr Richardson has been named Northwest Young Biotechnologist of the Year (sponsored by Nature) at the North West Development Agency/Bionow awards.
Low back pain (LBP) affects a large proportion of the adult population at some point in their lives and in many of these cases it is persistent, eventually leading to debilitating pain. The majority of the cases of LBP are due to degeneration of the intervertebral disc (IVD), the soft tissue which separates the vertebrae in the spine and protects them from damage; it is the flexibility of this tissue that allows movement of the spine (bending, twisting etc). The IVD is comprised of a central gel-like tissue (nucleus pulposus or NP), surrounded by a fibrous ring of tissue (annulus fibrosus or AF). Over time the NP becomes dry and fibrous and cannot support the weight of the body, which means the disc becomes damaged and painful and this is the source of the LBP in many people. Currently, treatments address the symptoms – mainly pain – using a combination of painkillers, physiotherapy or surgery, removing tissue to relieve the pain or fusing the vertebrae above and below the painful disc level together to remove the pain, although this also stops movement at that disc level. None of these options is ideal as they only treat the symptoms, not the cause, and are of limited long-term success.
The treatment Dr Richardson is developing uses a cell-based tissue engineering approach to regenerate the IVD at the affected level. This is achieved through the combination of the patients’ own mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and a naturally occurring collagen gel that can be implanted through a minimally-invasive surgical technique. MSCs are a population of progenitor cells found in the bone marrow of adults which can differentiate into many different cell types in the body, including bone, cartilage, fat and muscle cells. Dr Richardson found that for several reasons he could not use cells from the IVD itself and thus spent a number of years developing a method of producing NP cells from MSCs. He, together with colleagues, now has an international patent on this method. It was the development of this method, combined with the establishment of collaborative links with a company to supply the gel and a surgeon to develop the implantation technique, which won Dr Richardson the award.
Dr Richardson explained: "Once we have extracted the bone marrow from the patient and have purified the MSCs, they will be grown in culture and our patented method of differentiation will be applied. They will then be embedded within a gel which can be implanted back into the patient through an arthroscope. "The gel used, produced by Arthrokinetics, is based on a collagen that is a component of many tissues within the body, a totally natural product that is similar to the gel already used clinically for the treatment of articular cartilage defects. The ability to reimplant this within the body with an arthroscopic procedure – similar to an endoscopy, in which a camera is inserted through a narrow tube into the body – means that there is only a very small scar on the back and the patient could hopefully return home on the same day or the day after the surgery. Once implanted the differentiated MSCs would produce a new NP tissue with the same properties as the original and would both treat the underlying cause of the disease and remove the painful symptoms."
The treatment has massive implications for the future of LBP treatment – with substantial NHS cost savings as patients could be treated quickly and effectively without any need for extended hospitalisation. In addition, as both the cause and the symptoms are treated, only one treatment should be needed in a lifetime and there would be no need for continuous treatments with painkillers and physiotherapy. The patient would therefore benefit and there are also implications for productivity in the workplace as a large number of work hours are lost every year due to sickness leave for low back pain. In the UK alone the combined figures for lost productivity and health-care costs due to low back pain run in the tens of millions of pounds a year and this will only increase as the population ages.
Dr Richardson said: "I am delighted to have won the award. The judges acknowledged the importance of the work and the advances we had made in the treatment strategy. In particular they noted that with all the hype surrounding MSC-based treatments of many diseases, the fact that we were hoping to start pre-clinical trials next year was a massive step towards finally realising the potential of MSCs in a clinical environment. "They also commented on the difficulties I had overcome in finding an appropriate gel to complement the MSC differentiation work and in drawing in both commercial interest from the company which produces the gel and clinical interest from spinal surgeons who saw the potential of the treatment." Dr Judith Hoyland, head of the Intervertebral Disc Regeneration and Spinal Disease research group, said: "Dr Richardson has strived hard to overcome the numerous hurdles involved in such a complex process. As a result of his tireless dedication to the development of a clinically-viable tissue engineering strategy for treatment of low back pain, he was the ideal candidate to receive the young biotechnologist of the year award. I hope that it will spur him on to develop his full potential as a biotechnologist and become a credit to the burgeoning Northwest biotechnology sector." For more information or to interview Dr Stephen Richardson contact Media Relations Officers Mikaela Sitford or Jo Nightingale on 0161 275 2111/8156.
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