Adult Stem Cell Transplants May
Be Feasible
Reuters 2nov00
NEW YORK - Researchers have succeeded in getting adult human bone marrow stem cells to grow into a variety of cell types including muscle, bone and cartilage when the stem cells were transplanted into fetal sheep.
``Previously, we had been able to cause these stem cells to become more highly differentiated cells, like muscle cells, in the laboratory. Now, we wanted to find out what would happen if we put them into a living system,'' lead investigator Dr. Alan W. Flake from The Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, told Reuters Health in an interview.
``The transplanted human stem cells distributed to a variety of places in the sheep and were shown to persist in the sheep for up to a year without being rejected,'' Flake said.
Stem cells have the potential to become many different types of cells and it is hoped that they can be used to replace cells damaged in many types of illnesses, including diabetes, Parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's disease.
A surprise finding of the study, which is published in the November issue of the journal Nature Medicine, was the ability of the cells to persist in fetuses that had developed immune systems that might be expected to reject the transplants.
``This suggests that these cells may have special immunologic properties that may allow transplantation between individuals or even between species without rejection or the need for toxic immunosuppressive drugs,'' Flake explained in a statement.
Flake believes that further research with transplanting stem cells could one day lead to a treatment for muscular dystrophy--a degenerative disease that limits muscle function.
``Our hope is to be able to inject stem cells into fetuses with muscular dystrophy that would allow for the formation and growth of normal muscle cells,'' Flake told Reuters Health.