Posted on 07/26/2009 4:17:43 AM PDT by Salman
Science Daily (July 26, 2009) — Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering students have demonstrated a practical way to embed a patient's own adult stem cells in the surgical thread that doctors use to repair serious orthopedic injuries such as ruptured tendons. The goal, the students said, is to enhance healing and reduce the likelihood of re-injury without changing the surgical procedure itself.
The project team -- 10 undergraduates sponsored by Bioactive Surgical Inc., a Maryland medical technology company -- won first place in the recent Design Day 2009 competition conducted by the university's Department of Biomedical Engineering. In collaboration with orthopedic physicians, the students have begun testing the stem cell–bearing sutures in an animal model, paving the way for possible human trials within about five years.
The students believe this technology has great promise for the treatment of debilitating tendon, ligament and muscle injuries, often sports-related, that affect thousands of young and middle-aged adults annually. "Using sutures that carry stems cells to the injury site would not change the way surgeons repair the injury," said Matt Rubashkin, the student team leader, "but we believe the stem cells will significantly speed up and improve the healing process. And because the stem cells will come from the patient, there should be no rejection problems."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Hopefully they will be able to repair mangled or missing fingers, hands and limbs eventually.
Of course! Not only adult stem cells, but autologous adult stem cells (derived from the same individual)
I maintain that even adult stem cells are not everything that they are presented to be. Every stem cell article contains too many words like "possible" or "potential" or, my personal favorite, "holds the promise."
From this article:
the students have begun testing the stem cell–bearing sutures in an animal model, paving the way for possible human trials within about five years.
Well, let's see what happens in five years, shall we?
Ping
Of course! Not only adult stem cells, but autologous adult stem cells (derived from the same individual)
I maintain that even adult stem cells are not everything that they are presented to be. Every stem cell article contains too many words like "possible" or "potential" or, my personal favorite, "holds the promise."
Bone marrow is removed from a patient, the patient is treated for cancer, and the bone marrow is reimplanted. The bone marrow consists of stem cells, so that is an "autologous adult stem cell" treatment.The question that naturally arises from the approach in the article is, how long does it take to create the sutures with the autologous adult stem cells in it - and do you have to create and somehow bank the stem cells before they are needed? Obama won't like the expense if we all do that while we are healthy . . .
It's good to see adult stem cells being used in such a routine fashion, with the full expectation that they will be of great use to the patient.
And therefore, we need to continue to fund research into, and create new lines of, embryonic stem cells. </sarcasm>
:) No, he won't.
As to the rest of your post, I'm really not competent enough to discuss treatment failure rates of BMT (bone marrow transplants) But, unfortunately, they do happen.
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