Adult Stem Cell Growth Treats Cornea Disorders

stemcellar writes with a link to the ScienceDaily site, reporting on a method for adult stem cells to grow cornea stem cells. This use of differentiated stem cells in therapies on specific parts of the body is fairly novel, the article states, and could have numerous applications in medicine. "The research undertaken by the ophthalmologist has shown that, from a small biopsy sample, the new growth technique enables the growth of the number of stem cells thus obtained to the point of obtaining sufficient for the treatment to be effective. The cell sample is taken from the limb of the healthy eye - the ocular structure responsible for the transparency of the cornea. The importance of this growth method lies in the fact that it enables the characterization of the cells obtained, i.e. determining the quantity and viability of the units to be used."

Look Ma no anti-rejection medication!

[mrnick]

I like this kind of medicine. It uses your own body as a donor I am sure your left eye wouldn't reject cells from your right. rejection is the major problem with transplants today (beyond demand surpassing supply).

Now bring on the clones and grow me a new liver! I just bought a new bottle of Jim Beam! :)

Nick Powers

Not Globally Approved

[erbuc]

This is great stuff! The only problem is that the US Government won't approve such a treatment. I work for a Medical Tourism company in Thailand and we are already working with Theravitae on their Adult Stem Cell programs that do the same thing. It is being used for Coronary Heart patients and Diabetics with PAD. The patients own Adult Stems Cells are used and so far there is a 75% success rate that the patient recovers from the conditions they had prior to treatment. The Government in Thailand has approved this and US citizens can travel to Thailand for such treatments. I really hope the US wakes up to it's serious health problems soon.

Re:May not quite be ready for prime time

[rob1980]

I think that success rate is going to have to come up a bit, but at the same time I wonder how much of those 40% of treatments that failed resulted in the subject experiencing some kind of harmful side effect. If it's small enough more people may be willing to roll the bones and hope they just don't fit into the .01% category.

Re:Not Globally Approved

[FiniteElementalist]

I am not an expert on federal law, but I thought Bush was allowing adult stem cell research.

Yeah, what Bush did was refuse to provide federal funding on new lines of embryonic stem cells from after the time of the decision, but he wasn't opposing adult stem cells at all, much less banning research on them or use in treatment.

I don't know what the GP is all about, maybe just an advertisement?

Re:Ah nice, you hit the 'ethical' mark spot on

[headkase]

We need to ditch money soon. Money just represents unused energy or resources and capitalism is a method for allocating the surplus under conditions of scarcity dependent on goal(s). We not developing countries anymore in the West. We live in the land of plenty and our primary activities are trending into knowledge applications. Abolish copyrights in favor of a cooperative creative commons let everyone use everything and be amazed at what the stone-soup parable has to teach. Spare resources would still need to be managed so give the logistical planning functions to computers while a human sets the goals it evolves against. Capitalism has served its purpose here so stop treating it like religious dogma and envision a better way.

Re:Not Globally Approved

[erbuc]

Research yes, and embryonic stem cell research as well. But Adult Stem Cell research was pushed aside a few years ago in order to direct funds elsewhere.

The company that I spoke of actually picked up shop and moved to Thailand, had their research approved, and have a working fully approved product today. So this research in the US is already a reality for others.

I do not want to supply links or mention the company again as it may be construed as advertising and I do not wish to abuse my privileges here. Do a Google search and you can see there are quite a few testimonials out there and that other parts of the world are quickly leaving the US in the dust on this matter.

perhaps people who oppose experimenting on jews

[Anonymous Coward]

could simply stop using the information derived from captured nazi scientists!

i agree, we have to do something about these moronic bleeding hearts and their soapbox whining about 'ethics' and 'morality'.

Gedachtenexperiment...

[Anonymous Coward]

A Harvard bioethicist whose name I currently forget (if you don't believe me I'm happy to take the credit myself) has pointed out that even people who claim to believe that embryos are morally equivalent to babies generally DO NOT really believe that...

How do we know? Simple thought experiment:

A fertility clinic is on fire, and about to collapse. You have to choose which to save - door number one, a baby in a waiting room. Door number two, a liquid N2 tank with 40,000 frozen embryos. You can't save both. Which do you choose?

Well?