Researchers: Adult stem cells show more promise than thought

[babylonsister]

Research into stem cells of adults stirs hopes

Many researchers are coming to believe they can achieve as much using adult stem cells as using controversial human embryonic stem cells.


BY FRED TASKER
[e-mail]


A year after President Barack Obama eased restrictions on research into embryonic stem cells and pledged billions in new stimulus money for it, researchers are almost giddy with enthusiasm about progress in the field. They're confident stem cells will treat -- maybe someday cure -- heart disease, diabetes, spinal cord injury and other disorders.

But the excitement is not generated by stem cells harvested from human embryos.

Instead, researchers are coming to believe they can get results almost as good from adult stem cells taken from the patient's own bone marrow or belly fat, and even full-fledged adult cells from muscle tissue or skin.

``Adult stem cells have more flexibility than we thought,'' says Dr. Joshua Hare, director of the Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute at the University of Miami Medical School. ``The embryonic stem cell might not be the most valuable property in actual therapy. When you're treating a heart attack, you might do better with an adult stem cell.''

snip//

``The embryotic stem cell is the prototype, the ultimate stem cell,`` Hare says. ``It has the greatest capacity to become any other type of tissue. It's essential to work with both kinds of stem cells.''

``Embryonic stem cells remain central to our plan,'' says Dr. Camillo Ricordi, who is studying both adult and embryonic stem cells as director of UM's Diabetes Research Institute. ``Everything we've applied to other kinds of cells we learned first by studying embryonic stem cells.''

more...

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/24/1595749/research-into-stem-cells-of-adults.html

[lunatica]

1. This is exciting news

Patients might carry the very cells that will cure them. How amusing that belly fat might possibly be the cure!

[babylonsister]

2. Really-take mine, please! Study the heck out of it!

:D

[lunatica]

3. I've got plenty myself. Do you suppose they'll pay for the lipo?

[Jennicut]

5. I would offer to be a guinea pig. I have type 1 diabetes.

Injections 5 times a day of insulin. Actually, I get offers to be in studies frequently but experimental medicines freak me out a bit and for good reason. But stem cell therapy is one thing I could see doing.

[Kdillard]

4. That is amazing news. Hopefully the billions being given thanks to President

Obama will help more breakthroughs become possible.

[lunamagica]

6. Wonderful news, but please.....

let this be put into practice within my lifetime.

I'm tired of "promising" research which "maybe someday will cure"

Meanwhile so many suffer, hope and wait for years and years and years......

[Phx_Dem]

7. Thank God we got rid of Bush. How many years have been wasted

sidelining this valuable, life-saving research.