Stem Cell Therapy

By now, I'm sure many of you have heard that Obama has signed an executive order lifting the ban on federally funded stem cell research. It was one of the first things he did when he took office. For all of my blog readers who are interested in the subject of stem cells, I thought I'd give you a primer on what's going on (which will in the process teach me about what's going on). In my opinion, this is the most exciting thing happening not just in health care but in all of science.

Stem Cells
There are several stages of stem cells, in order of most general to most specific:

1. Totipotent
2. Pluripotent
3. Multipotent
4. Oligopotent
5. Unipotent

Embryonic cells are typically Totipotent can make any kind of cell with the right kind of stimulation and preparation. Adult stem cells are much more specific, usually Multipotent. These stem cells can be found in a number of tissues and umbilical chord blood. Adult stem cells are already used in treatment of disease - an example of this the transplanting of bone marrow for leukemia patients. The challenge with stem cells is making sure that they become the desired cell - if not, a cancerous condition called teratoma could result. In addition, the stem cell must be recognized as part of the body to prevent an immune response from developing.

Geron

Geron, a bay area Biotech company, is launching the "world's first clinical trial of embryonic stem cell-based therapy". This trial, which has just been approved by the FDA, will be conducted on 8 - 10 patients with severe and permanent spinal chord injuries and it could begin as early as the summer. I suggest you go to Geron's website on watch the mouse video to see what happens when stem cells are are injected at the point of the spinal chord injury. It's amazing. Geron also has pretty interesting 'telemorase-inhibiting' drug for use against cancer - check that out as well. This drug is intended to stop the mechanism involved in cell division.

Neural Stem

Neural stem is another company to check out. This one doesn't seem to be as far along as Geron, but it seems to be in the same general business. Neural stem seeks to make large quantities of neural stem cells for use against ALS, Parkinsons, etc. Neural Stem appears to be a competitor of Geron.

These are exciting times for stem cell-based therapies, and I know that the world will be hoping for positive results of Geron's soon-to-begin clinical trials.