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Skin Stem Cells Used to Mend Spines of Rats

Journal written by stemceller (975823) and posted by samzenpus on Thu Sep 06, 2007 01:54 PM
from the rats-get-the-best-health-care dept.
Biotech
The Toronto Star reports researchers have used adult skin stem cells to heal spinal cord injuries in rats. "Injured rats injected with skin-derived stem cells regained mobility and had better walking co-ordination, according to the study published yesterday in the Journal of Neuroscience. The skin-derived stem cells, injected directly into the injured rats' spinal cords, were able to survive in their new location and set off a flurry of activity, helping to heal the cavity in the cord."
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Journal: Skin stem cells used to mend spines of rats by stemceller (975823)
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  • I say. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hsensei (1055922) on Thursday September 06 2007, @02:03PM (#20497971) Homepage
    It has never been a better time to be a rat. no cancer or diabetes and now no paralasys.

    • Re:I say. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chris Burke (6130) on Thursday September 06 2007, @02:22PM (#20498195) Homepage
      It has never been a better time to be a rat. no cancer or diabetes and now no paralasys.

      Except for the part where they first give you cancer, diabetes, and paralysis.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by GeckoX (259575)
        And then you're only given a 50% chance of not being in the control group.

        And that's still only beneficial if you're in the test group for the particular drug or therapy that actually works!

        And even if you are that lucky, there's a more than probable chance that your reward for surviving all of that and getting 'cured', will be to be euthanized shortly thereafter.

        Odds...they are not good for a lab rat.
      • Except for the part where they first give you cancer, diabetes, and paralysis.
         
        Except, according to california law EVERYTHING causes cancer. So for all we know these rats were fed chocolate coated alaskan cod till their backs gave out.

  • If my rat ever breaks his back I'll know just what to do.

  • Lab Rats (Score:3, Funny)

    by Perl-Pusher (555592) on Thursday September 06 2007, @02:03PM (#20497979)
    If humans were rats we would have cured all major illnesses by now. It seems everyday I read something that we have been able to cure or cause in rats. Unfortunately progress on humans has been much slower.

    • Re:Lab Rats (Score:5, Interesting)

      by iamacat (583406) on Thursday September 06 2007, @02:07PM (#20498001)
      Indicating that we need an informed human volunteer program. We ask people to risk their lives at war in another country, surely taking some risks to help millions in your own country is not out of the question? I would think risky experiments would be limited to those who stand to benefit from them or terminally ill who want to end their life on a meaningful note.
      • 'human volunteer program'

        The program should be voluntary but I see no reason it should have to be gratis. Pay top yen and conduct the experiments on female children in China. It's a win/win.
        • But then of course the problem is that many of the test subjects may die before they can collect their payment. Solution: instead of buying the services of the child, simply buy the child itself outright from its parents. This would also allow the experimenters greater freedom in terms of how they treat and store their subjects, since the child would be their property and not entitled to inconveniences like "humane treatment".

          Enrich third world parents, and advance first world medicine at the same time.
          • 'But then of course the problem is that many of the test subjects may die before they can collect their payment.'

            The payments go to the parents (if subject is under age) or whomever the subject chooses as next of kin (if of age). That is what would motivate desperate people to participate.

            'Solution: instead of buying the services of the child, simply buy the child itself outright from its parents.'

            Shame on you, that would be slavery and unethical. The child would be used without consent in a case like that.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by geekoid (135745)
        There are process for doing just that. I forget the name.

        Needless to say, it is a very complicated issue, and success in rats is a very good thing, but there are many more tests that need to be performed before it is ready for even the most basic human testing.
        There have been many treatments and cures for mice that failed for a variety of reason before human testing.

      • Re:Lab Rats (Score:4, Interesting)

        by milamber3 (173273) on Thursday September 06 2007, @02:19PM (#20498151)
        This already happens for quite a few diseases. Look at Stem Cells Inc. and their work with Batten's Disease. These children are going to die if nothing is done so they are doing approved trial with them. The problem with using the people who are most ill is that sometimes they die before you get all the information you need from the trial. Trials are expensive and time consuming already so that's a pretty big negative to overcome.

      • Re:Lab Rats (Score:5, Interesting)

        by rucs_hack (784150) on Thursday September 06 2007, @02:50PM (#20498557)
        terminally ill who want to end their life on a meaningful note

        They already do that. I had a friend who was diagnosed with a very nasty cancer that killed him in four months. Unfortunately his 'doctors' convinced him to allow them to test a drug on him. It helped him not a jot, a fact that they alluded to being likely (being of medical background I could read between the lines of what he was told), but never quite managed to explain clearly for him, and made him puke constantly. I did try to convince him to not take part, but they'd got him on the 'for the good of other people' thing. His was not the first case I encountered where this had occured, just the closest to me.

        Terminally ill people make bad subjects. For one thing they're already dying, so your looking at a system in a failure condition, not much useful general data to be had there, and we are, after all, dealing with a person who may want to be doing other stuff in their last bit of time alive. They are also prone to being fragile of mind (not always, but it can happen in those who suddenly find they are dying young), so susceptible to being talked into things not in their best interests.

        I'm against it, you may have gathered. Personally I think we should be growing brainless human bodies (as in never had a brain, never alive without external help), and test on them instead. Heck, we might even be able to cuts bits off them for people to use.
        • Well, you are against it but shouldn't the decision be left to each individual? Maybe your friend concluded that he would rather help others than do "other stuff" with his remaining time. Someone about to die would probably puke a lot anyway.

          I am not prepared to intentionally create mutilated human bodies. Lets wait until we can grow individual organs. A kidney floating in nutrient solution doesn't seem too human.

      • I agree with you.

        We experiment on people so we can cure rats.
        • Considering that in the U.S. alone, nearly two-thirds of all capital convictions are overturned, I don't think that is a very good idea. Also, there are about 3,000 inmates on death row right now, I'm pretty sure thats not enough for all of the medical procedures that are being developed today.

    • Re:Lab Rats (Score:4, Insightful)

      by tloh (451585) on Thursday September 06 2007, @02:29PM (#20498269)

      If humans were rats we would have cured all major illnesses by now.

      Yes, but you would be a tiny part of a semi-formal, well-established, institutionalized breeding program. Your relatives would be your parents, siblings and cousins all at the same time due to inbreeding. You and your fellow rats would have been carefully designed genetically to custom physiological specifications so as to make experimenting easy and meaningful. Like for example, you would have no immune system so that foreign cells can be incubated inside your body without suffering tissue rejection issues. Or you would be genetically predisposed to some congenital disease so that drugs can be tested on you for effectiveness.

      I say all this in jest, of course. It is important to realize that success with rats are accomplished only with the benefit of an incredible ammount of control excercised by researchers that translate very poorly to the realistic world human beings are living in. Beyond these initial animal trials, there are still an incredible number of hoops that medical researchers have to jump through before they can come up with something that is injectable into you.

    • I recall once reading that 1/3 of drugs tested on rats and mice have different effects with each (it may have been toxicity). Even if 1/3 is exaggerated, the point was that extrapolating to humans is even more dicey.
    • We're a wee bit more careful when experimenting on humans.

  • OK I'm confused. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sakusha (441986) on Thursday September 06 2007, @02:18PM (#20498145)
    This makes no sense to me. I remember a long time ago (maybe 1976) when I was a pre-med student in college, I got a part time job at the hospital's Anaesthesiology Lab. Some of the doctors were always doing research on lab rats, it was my job to assist them (mostly doing computer data analysis). One day I saw a doctor doing some particularly nasty stuff to some rats, I asked him what he was doing. He said he was severing their spinal cords. I asked him why he was doing that. He told me that rats have a unique ability to partially repair their spinal cord even if it was completely severed. Then he showed me how he did it (not that I really wanted to see it). He made a little slice, a little snip, and crudely sewed the rat back up. I asked him why he didn't put some antibiotics in the wound or anything. He said, "well they're just rats." Sheesh. That was about the time I decided I didn't want to be a doctor.

    So anyway, I was under the impression that rats already had the ability to repair their spinal cord even without the use of stem cells. Perhaps I've mis-remembered what the doctor/researcher said, does anyone know the details?
    • While TFA doesn't specifically give evidence for your anecdote, it does mention that "Injured rats injected with skin-derived stem cells regained mobility and had better walking co-ordination..." which seems to imply that the rats without the stem cell treatment did partially repair themselves, but the rats treated with stem cells healed better.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Colin Smith (2679)
      http://www.rds-online.org.uk/pages/page.asp?i_Pag e ID=145&i_ToolbarID=3 [rds-online.org.uk]

      Apparently if the severance is incomplete they can regrow nerve fibres.

      I thought humans could too though. I thought it was the scarring on the ends of the nerve fibres which prevented regrowth. My father severed the nerve in a finger, after several years it regrew and he could feel things again.
      • The other big issue is scarring. Nerves have a really hard time growing through scar tissue. What I was hoping to see in this article is how long the injuries were left untreated. If stem cells were cultivated before the injury and injected before scarring can occur, it's not going to be that helpful in real-life situations.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TomorrowPlusX (571956)
      I'm not a neuroscientist -- but my girlfriend is. And I've watched her do the exact operation you described for the purpose of making illustrations for her papers ( I'm a graphic designer ). It was Gruesome. Anyway, I don't think it's that rats can heal their spinal cords. They can't. But, like us, they can heal damaged spinal cords up to a particular level of trauma, and since rats are the ubiquitous model for this reasearch, that level of trauma is reasonably well-understood.

      So, a lot of this spinal work
      • I'm not sure I'd describe this procedure as an "operation," more like a mutilation. I recall the researcher completely severing the spinal cord with a scissors, about halfway down the rat's back (but of course I could be wrong, this was 30 years ago and memory fades). I vaguely recall him saying this was just above the point where the nerves that control the hind legs leave the spinal column, this made it easy to assess healing by watching the rat's ability to walk with its hind legs, and at the same time i

  • The finding lends promise to the idea that stem cells could one day be used to heal spinal cord injuries in humans, helping thousands of Canadians to walk again.
    Is there something about Canadians that makes them more like rats than the rest of us? (or more likely to walk after this treatment?)
    • Yes.

      And I could tell you what it is, but then I'd have to kill you.

      We are going to rule the world after all, ehh. ;)
  • Personally, I think we should just let the politicians die. But that's just me...

  • Cerebrospinal applications (Score:5, Funny)

    by athloi (1075845) on Thursday September 06 2007, @02:41PM (#20498435) Homepage Journal
    Can they make idiots re-grow brains?

  • chinese got there first (Score:3, Informative)

    by crayz (1056) on Thursday September 06 2007, @02:44PM (#20498475) Homepage
    Sounds similar to the experimental (human) treatment being practiced in China [theglobeandmail.com]. There's been a lot of skepticism about why/how such a thing could work, but according to a lot of people who've gone through the treatment it does restore some amount of functionality

  • Finally. (Score:4, Funny)

    by proverbialcow (177020) on Thursday September 06 2007, @04:59PM (#20500043) Journal
    At long last, Christopher Reeve will be able to walk again.

    What's that you say? Ohhhh...
  • In other news, a connection has been found between the health of lab rat spinal cords, & the jailing of scientists who break them.

    Rats in labs where scientists had been jailed were shown to have 100% healthier spines than in labs where scientists hadn't been jailed.

    • Re:very nice (Score:5, Funny)

      by DragonTHC (208439) <Dragon@nOSPaM.gamerslastwill.com> on Thursday September 06 2007, @01:59PM (#20497909) Homepage Journal
      no, but your penis will be able to walk again.

    • Re:very nice (Score:5, Funny)

      by Wonko the Sane (25252) * <wts42@yahoo.com> on Thursday September 06 2007, @02:03PM (#20497975) Homepage Journal

      can we enlarge my penis now with this technique?
      The first time this happens, I predict federal funding of stem cell research to be approved by congress within 24 hours.

      • ..... approved by congress within 24 hours.
        But didn't Bob Dole quit congress when he lost his presidential election bid? ....Unless some other legislator I didn't know about has now come out with improving sexual experience as a personal crusade.

      • The first time this happens, I predict federal funding of stem cell research to be approved by congress within 24 hours.
        Tell them you can cure a case of the gays with stem cells and the funding will be showering you like a schoolgirl in a bukkake video.
      • (ex)Senator Craig is now trying to claim his bathroom stunt was "research".

        Senator Clinton was heard mumbling something about interns .... and reversing her view on national health care system.

      • Re:very nice (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Marxist Hacker 42 (638312) * <seebert@aracnet.com> on Thursday September 06 2007, @02:38PM (#20498403) Homepage Journal
        Federal funding of adult stem cell research already exists. It's the embryonic stem cell research that is forbidden in the United States; and despite being legal in other countries, has yet to achieve even ONE useful cure. Where Adult Stem Cells, like in TFA, are now up to 20 or 30 miracle cures of a variety of injuries from heart attacks to severed spine paralysis. One ASC researcher has even claimed that he can regenerate 30,000 human brains from a single Grey matter stem cell (though, one would suspect that any knowledge the donor had would not be so duplicated- after all growing nervous tissue does not create the connections between those nerves).
          • Interesting, but not quite the same thing, since you can also use adult stem cells to make GDNF. Also note it wasn't a cure- it didn't delay onset of symptoms since the surviving motor neurons also lost their connections to muscle tissue.

            In addition to that, this isn't a typical stem cell therapy, where you replace damaged tissue with stem cell grown tissue of the same type. This is something altogether different- if you had a bacteria you had engineered to produce GDNF, you'd end up with EXACTLY the sam

        • Re:very nice (Score:5, Informative)

          by Pentavirate (867026) on Thursday September 06 2007, @03:09PM (#20498849) Homepage Journal
          It's the embryonic stem cell research that is forbidden in the United States

          One little difference from what you said. Embryonic stem cell research is not forbidden in the United States. The federal government just won't fund it except from a couple of pre-existing stem cell lines (which I guess are corrupted and worthless now anyway). Lot's of embryonic stem cell research happens via private funds and is often even funded through states like California.

          Everything else you said is spot on.

          • Re:very nice (Score:4, Informative)

            by bensafrickingenius (828123) on Thursday September 06 2007, @11:03PM (#20503365)
            Another interesting point -- George W. Bush is the only president ever to provide any funding for embryonic stem cell research. Ever. And yet he gets his ass kicked for not expanding the funding to cover more cell lines.

      • can we enlarge my penis now with this technique?
        The first time this happens, I predict federal funding of stem cell research to be approved by congress within 24 hours.
        Naw, it'll face stiff resistance from the White House.
      • Who cares what congress does? In Soviet Russia, rats break YOUR spine!

        dude, what happened to my meds?
    • I think it's great that adult stem cell research has been so successful. Also, according to this story: http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070604/full/44761 8 [nature.com] a.html they can now take skin cells and turn them into embryonic stem cells. Soon there will be no need to use embryos for stem cell research.

      Somehow, we've so completely bought into the notion that embryonic stem cells are the only ones with promise, that when -- time and again -- we see that the breakthroughs are occurring with adult stem cells, we

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by drawfour (791912)
        Why can't scientists use BOTH? It's quite possible that embryonic stem cells are better suited in some instances, and adult stem cells are better suited in others. There's no need to use one to the exclusion of the other.

        So yes, embryonic stem cells _should_ be opened up to federal funding programs, so that advances can be made w/ either type of stem cell.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Somehow, people have gotten a crazy notion into their heads: that adult and embryonic stem cells are mutually exclusive. It's like we can only research one and not the other! How absurd.

      I've never heard anyone argue that research on adult stem cells should be halted. Yet more than one reply to this post suggests that it's common to believe that embryonic stem cells are the only useful ones to research. Have the anti-research crowd given up trying to argue logically? Are they now going to beat this "one or t

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