Stem cell mania

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Paralysed man Darek Fidyka walks again after pioneering surgery

A man who was completely paralysed from the waist down can walk again after a British-funded surgical breakthrough which offers hope to millions of people who are disabled by spinal cord injuries.

Polish surgeons used nerve-supporting cells from the nose of Darek Fidyka, a Bulgarian man who was injured four years ago, to provide pathways along which the broken tissue was able to grow.

The 38-year-old, who is believed to be the first person in the world to recover from complete severing of the spinal nerves, can now walk with a frame and has been able to resume an independent life, even to the extent of driving a car, while sensation has returned to his lower limbs.

Professor Geoffrey Raisman, whose team at University College London’s institute of neurology discovered the technique, said: “We believe that this procedure is the breakthrough which, as it is further developed, will result in a historic change in the currently hopeless outlook for people disabled by spinal cord injury.”

The surgery was performed by a Polish team led by one of the world’s top spinal repair experts, Dr Pawel Tabakow, from Wroclaw Medical University, and involved transplanting olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) from the nose to the spinal cord.

OECs assist the repair of damaged nerves that transmit smell messages by opening up pathways for them to the olfactory bulbs in the forebrain.

Relocated to the spinal cord, they appear to enable the ends of severed nerve fibres to grow and join together – something that was previously thought to be impossible.

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Stem cells that can kill cancer have been engineered by scientists

Harvard scientists have discovered a new way to fight brain cancer with stem cells, a recent study has revealed.

The team of scientists, who experimented on mice, used genetically engineered stem cells that released cancer killing toxins, while leaving healthy cells unaffected.

Most importantly, the modified cells were able to emit the tumour killing poison without succumbing to its effects.

In the tests the main brain tumour was surgically removed, before the stem cells were placed at the site of the tumour in a biodegradable gel, to eradicate the remaining cancerous cells.

It is considered a breakthrough in cancer treatment by experts

The study, published in the Stem Cells journal, was the fruit of years of work around stem cell therapy for cancer.

Dr Khalid Shah, who led the team based at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, said: “Cancer-killing toxins have been used with great success in a variety of blood cancers, but they don’t work as well in solid tumours because the cancers aren’t as accessible.

“A few years ago we recognised that stem cells could be used to continuously deliver these therapeutic toxins to tumours in the brain, but first we needed to genetically engineer stem cells that could resist being killed themselves by the toxins.”

He added: “Now, we have toxin-resistant stem cells that can make and release cancer-killing drugs.”

His team will continue to develop stem cells and test them on mice with different types of brain tumour to enhance the efficacy of the treatment.

Dr Shah predicts that clinical trials with the therapy will begin within the next five years.

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Lab-grown 'miniature stomachs' created from human stem cells for the first time

Scientists have successfully grown the first fully functioning miniature human stomach from pluripotent stem cells.

The miniature guts – known as intestinal ‘organoids’ – will provide scientists with an “unprecedented tool” for researching diseases such as cancer, and could one day lead to the creation of personalized intestinal tissue that could be used to repair damaged stomachs.

The research, published in the journal Nature and led by stem cell biologist James Well at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre in the US, follows the creation of miniature in vitro kidneys through a similar process last year.

Wells and his team created the pea-sized stomachs, complete with a corrugated and undulated lining – just like the real thing, and inject them with the bacterium Helicobacter pylori.

More than half the world’s population is infected with this bug, and although the majority do not suffer any side effects because of it around 20 per cent will suffer from gastric ulcers and 2 per cent will develop stomach cancer – the second most fatal cancer in developing countries.

However, the link between H. pylori and gastric disease is complex and often contradictory (some studies even suggest the bacterium decreases the risk of some cancers) and studying the stomach at the point of infection near impossible.

The creation of these intestinal organoids is the perfect solution, giving scientists an easy testing-ground to see how the bacterium grows, infiltrates and infects human stomachs.

The research could even lead one day to the creation of intestinal ‘patches’, grown from a patient’s stem cells to be placed over the stomach tissue damaged by ulcers that cause pain and internal bleeding.

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