Bone Marrow May Restore Cells Lost in Vision Diseases

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — University of Florida scientists
conducting experiments with mice have found evidence that
the body naturally replenishes small amounts of cells in
the eye essential for healthy vision.

The finding may shatter the belief that a cell layer vital
for eyesight called the retinal pigment epithelium, or RPE,
is a nonrenewable resource, say researchers writing in a
recent issue of Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual
Science.

RPE plays a vital role in our visual health by forming the
outer barrier of the retina and supporting the function of
cells that receive light. Damage to RPE is present in many
diseases of the retina, including age-related macular
degeneration, which affects more than 1.75 million people
in the United States.

With evidence that the body does indeed regenerate these
cells in small amounts, scientists can focus on ways to
accelerate natural healing processes to treat sight-robbing
injuries or diseases.

“What this tells us is for problems such as age-related
macular degeneration, we should be able to harvest stem
cells to help repair the damage,” said senior author Edward
Scott, a professor of molecular genetics at the UF Shands
Cancer Center and director of the Program in Stem Cell
Biology and Regenerative Medicine at UF’s College of
Medicine. “The question is whether we can do it in a
patient.”

Scientists widely believe that RPE is a finite resource.
The same belief used to be held about brain cells — people
who suffered from trauma, stroke or disease formerly faced
no hope of growing new cells to replace dead ones.

Then, in the late 1990s, when scientists began to report
findings of brain cell growth in humans and monkeys later
in life, focus turned toward understanding the mechanisms
to regenerate cells in the brain.

Now, UF researchers believe it may be possible to also grow
new cells in the retina to replace cells lost to injury or
disease.

“In people, retinal pigment epithelium can become damaged
with age,” said Jeffrey Harris, a graduate student in the
molecular cell biology program in UF’s College of Medicine
and first author of the paper. “Factors like smoking and
diet also come into play. The problem is without these
cells, the rods and cones — our primary cells for vision —
die. If we can regenerate the retinal pigment epithelium,
it could make a big difference in our visual health.”

Scientists were able to detect that RPE cells indeed appear
to be naturally replenished in the test animals by
transplanting bone marrow cells from normal male mice into
albino females with two different types of acute RPE
injury.

Bone marrow contains stem cells, which have the
extraordinary abilities to home in on injuries and possibly
regenerate other cell types in the body. In this case, the
cells were transplanted to confirm that bone marrow does
regenerate the injured RPE. It was easier to track male,
pigment-producing cells in female, albino recipients,
Harris said.

Chemical and microscopic analysis showed the cells that
traveled to the injury site and transformed into RPE indeed
had male genetic characteristics. Furthermore, these cells
were capable of producing pigment — a colorful indication
that the RPE could only have arisen from the donor bone
marrow stem cells.

“We did not use a direct model of age-related macular
degeneration,” Scott said. “But we now know that when RPE
is injured, it can be replaced in certain situations. It
gives us growth factors, cell pathways and other different
places to look at to find reasons why the disease is
occurring.”

Researchers want to discover ways to mobilize an elderly
patient’s own cells to travel to the injury site to make
repairs.

“The dogma has been that we’re born with a fixed amount of
RPE, but there is growing evidence retinal progenitor cells
exist in the adult,” said Lawrence Rizzolo, a Yale
University associate professor of anatomy and experimental
surgery and of ophthalmology and visual science who was not
involved in the research. “To derive cells of neuronal
lineage from cells of bone-marrow lineage is significant,
if the finding stands up to the test of time. Compared to
RPE transplantation, there are a lot of advantages if
someone’s own bone marrow could supply the cells, because
it’s a ready source and the cells would not be rejected by
the patient. Further, if bone-marrow progenitors
circulating in the blood could be attracted to sites of
disease, surgery could be avoided.”

www.stemcell-tech.com

Adult cells are behind much of stem cell success so far

The great potential moral controversies and political party
alignments associated with stem cell issue makes the subject
a hot topic.


Human stem cells can be obtained from human embryos,
produced either by in vitro fertilization of human eggs or
cloning via somatic cell nuclear transplant, or adults.

The often stated advantages of embryonic stem cells are 1)
their great promise, 2) their potential to form every cell
type, 3) their rapid proliferation, 4) their lack of
rejection and finally, 5) their usefulness in drug testing
and disease models.

However, from a scientific and medical point of view these
advantages are less clear.

The "great promise" of embryonic cells is often stated by
scientists that either hold key patents or are strongly
supported by biotech companies pursuing embryonic cells
commercially.

Every type of stem cell may be useful for injuries but are
unlikely to cure most diseases, as underlying causes of
uncured diseases are often not known. Stem cells may
alleviate the symptoms for several years but not affect the
disease process. Other areas of research are actively being
studied on disease processes so stem cells are not the
magic silver bullet in diseases.

The "potential of embryonic stem cells to possibly form
every cell type" in the body is amazing but is of little
clinical relevance. As long as a stem/progenitor cell is
capable of forming the cell types needed for a particular
injury or disease, the capability to form every cell type
is a moot point.

Furthermore, there are numerous supporting studies that
stem cells derived from adults have the same potential.
Sources of adult stem cells include the skin, fat, bone
marrow stromal cells, umbilical cord and many other sites
in the body.

The "rapid proliferation of embryonic stem cells" is rather
ironic claim in that the quality cited for the superiority
of embryonic stem cells is actually responsible for causing
serious problems. Rapid growth is not always a desirable
quality, as clearly seen with weeds in a garden or cancer
in the body.

In an animal model of Parkinson's disease, rats injected
with embryonic stem cells showed a slight benefit in about
50% of the rats, but one-fifth of the rats died of brain
tumors caused by the embryonic stem cells.

The "lack of rejection of embryonic stem cells" is a clever
twist of words. It is true that embryonic cells are not
rejected. However, to be useful as a therapy, the cell must
mature into a particular cell type.

When the cell matures, it is recognized by the immune
system as foreign and is rejected. However, it has also
been argued that this is the reason for the great need for
human cloning (somatic cell nuclear transplant) so the
problem of rejection of embryonic stem cell can be avoided.

This field is in its infancy, and only a very few studies
have been done to even demonstrate the feasibility of this
in experimental animals. Pursuing this extreme measure when
the human body is full of stem/progenitor cells that would
not be rejected is one of the most absurd directions ever
observed in the history of science that is supposedly being
promoted to help people.

"Usefulness in drug testing and disease models" is not a
reasonable claim because tissue models and drugs need to be
tested on mature tissue, not embryonic cells. There are
numerous tissue cultures model systems of muscle, skin,
etc., that are routinely used in drug and disease models.

The advantages of stem cells derived from adult stem cells
are virtually unknown to the American public. The most
profitable, not the best, treatment for people is not
surprisingly getting the most publicity.

The greatest advantage of adult stem cells is that it's
usually possible to use a person's own stem cells, which is
the safest stem cell option for people. This avoids the
problems of rejection, disease transmission, chromosomal
abnormalities and uncontrolled growth.

One problem with embryonic stem cells that is rarely
mentioned is that methods have yet to be developed to grow
these cells in a manner that does not induce significant
chromosomal abnormalities.

If one looks at the human clinical trials or research using
experimental animals, the record for adult stem cells
compared to embryonic stem cells is extremely impressive.
In examining only the scientific evidence, one wonders why
the controversy even exists.

Parkinson's disease: When a transplant consists of
embryonic/fetal tissue, the stem/progenitor cells are the
only cells that survive. In two clinical trials using
embryonic/fetal tissue, devastating deterioration at one
year after treatment occurred in about 15% of these
patients that was believed to result from cellular
overgrowth or from rejection of the foreign cells/tissue
derived from embryo or fetus.

These results are in striking contrast to the report on a
patient who received his own adult stem cells, who had
almost full recovery for several years after the
transplant.

In a recent animal study, human embryonic stem cells not
only did not cause improvement in an animal model of
Parkinson's disease but also caused tumor formation.
Another direction of hope for Parkinson's disease is the
use of growth factors.

Diabetes: Diabetes, like Parkinson's disease, is a disease,
so it may not be possible to cure diabetes with any type of
stem cells but only dissipate the symptoms for several
years. Recently, insulin independence was reported in a
person after receiving cells from her mother.

Also encouraging were results found in animal studies that
blocking the autoimmune reaction can reverse diabetes in
mice. There are also several reports that adult stem cells
can develop into insulin-secreting cells.

Spinal cord injury: The comparison of results with adult
and embryonic stem cells is even more dramatic. Although
mice receiving embryonic stem cells made the front page of
many newspapers and extensive web coverage, a paper
published by Zurita and Vaquero found almost total recovery
from complete paralysis in rats using adult stem cells from
bone marrow. Transplants of tissue containing one's own
stem cells is safe and causes some improvement in people
with severe, chronic spinal cord injury.

Heart disease: Several recent studies patients with heart
attacks report benefit from adult stem cells derived from
bone marrow. Clinical trials have also shown improvements
in some patients with heart failure after using one's own
adult stem cells in treatment.

Similar comparisons can be made for a variety of diseases
and injuries. But the successes with adult stem cells will
never make headlines or be heard by the majority of the
American public.

Although it may take years for these adult stem cell
treatments to be commonly available, the results with adult
stem cells will eventually end a controversy that should
never have existed in the first place. The controversy may
end even sooner than that with last month's report of
embryonic stem cells can be derived from sperm, as reported
in the most recent edition of "Nature."

Get More info on how you can benefit from your own Stem Cells
please go here: http://www.stemcell-tech.com

Jean Peduzzi-Nelson is an associate professor in the
department of anatomy and cell biology Wayne State
University School of Medicine in Detroit.

Adult Stem Cells Help Weakened Hearts

Even patients who suffered an episode decades ago can
benefit, researchers say. By Karen Kaplan and Alan Zarembo
Times Staff Writers

September 21, 2006

Using stem cells harvested from patients' own bone marrow,
researchers improved cardiac function in heart attack
patients months, years — and even decades — after the
attacks, they reported Wednesday.

The infusion of stem cells boosted cardiac pumping
efficiency by 7% in three months — a modest gain, but still
a significant improvement for a chronic condition.

In one case, a patient who had suffered a heart attack 30
years earlier showed an 11% improvement after the
treatment, according to the study in the New England
Journal of Medicine.

The German researchers also found tentative signs that
patients could continue to improve with repeated
treatments.

"We have always thought that a heart attack is permanent
damage, but now there is the potential that this damage can
be repaired," said Dr. Christopher P. Cannon, a
cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston who
was not involved in the research.

Though the researchers are uncertain why the therapy works,
the findings are a sign that the long-touted regenerative
powers of stem cells may be gradually moving from the
laboratory into viable human therapies.

Some researchers cautioned that it was too soon to say that
the results could be translated into a routine treatment.

"There are a number of therapies that have gotten to this
step but when subjected to more rigorous trials have not
worked," said Dr. Gregg C. Fonarow, a professor of
cardiovascular medicine at UCLA.

But Dr. Andreas M. Zeiher, chair of the department of
medicine at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt
and senior author of the study, said the preliminary
results pointed to potential new strategies for treating
chronic heart disease, for which there is no cure.

Stem cells present one of the most tantalizing mysteries in
medicine. One form, known as embryonic stem cells, are
capable of generating any type of tissue in the body, but
scientists haven't learned the biochemical means to
transform them.

The current study focused on a second type of cells known
as adult stem cells. There are many types, each focused on
regenerating a specific group of tissues to help the body
repair normal wear and tear.

Stem cells from bone marrow have been used for decades to
regenerate blood and immune cells in cancer patients.
Laboratory experiments suggest that these cells also can
make heart muscle, blood vessels, nerve cells and other
tissues.

The advantage of bone marrow stem cells is that they are
easy to extract and can be collected from the same patients
they will be used to treat, avoiding problems of tissue
rejection.

Heart disease has been one of the primary targets of stem
cell research.

One of five deaths in the United States is caused by a
heart attack, which occurs when heart muscle is deprived of
blood and dies. About 1.2 million heart attacks occur in
the United States every year, leading to nearly 500,000
deaths, according to the American Heart Assn.

The German researchers recruited 75 patients who had
suffered a heart attack at least three months — and as long
as 30 years — earlier.

The patients were already receiving state-of-the-art drug
treatments for their heart disease, including the use of
beta blockers and cholesterol-lowering statins.

The researchers extracted 50 milliliters of bone marrow
from the patients' hips. They isolated a soup of cells that
included the stem cells and infused it into patients within
a matter of hours.

The researchers divided the patients into three groups. One
received the bone marrow stem cells and another was treated
with different stem cells derived from their own blood. A
third group served as a control.

Three months later, the researchers tested the patients'
left ventricular ejection fraction, a measure of how much
oxygenated blood is pumped into the circulatory system. In
healthy people, it ranges from 57% to 75%.

The patients in the study started out with ejection
fractions that averaged from 39% to 43%.

Those treated with bone marrow stem cells saw their
heart-pumping efficiency increase over three months by an
average of 2.9 points — a 7% improvement.

Over the same period, patients in the control group saw
their pumping efficiency decline by an average of about 3%,
and those treated with blood stem cells dropped about 1%.

To confirm their findings, the researchers swapped the
treatments and gave patients in the control group either
blood or bone marrow stem cells. Again, the patients who
got bone marrow cells saw an increase in their pumping
efficiency.

Fonarow of UCLA said the improvement was similar to the
effect of statins, which boost pumping efficiency by 5% to
8%.

The patients treated with bone marrow cells showed an
increased ability to tolerate physical activity before
becoming tired or breathless — and the improvements have
been sustained, Zeiher said.

He said one patient who had suffered a heart attack four
years earlier improved by 61% and returned to the golf
course to play at least nine holes.

"For the past 20 years, we have obsessed about treating
[heart attacks] quickly — time is muscle," said Dr. Douglas
Losordo, chief of cardiovascular research at St.
Elizabeth's Medical Center in Boston. "What this paper
tells us is there is another time window for therapeutic
intervention that's quite a bit longer and larger than we
thought."

Dr. Anthony Rosenzweig, director of cardiovascular research
at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said the
results suggested the stem cells were doing more than just
accelerating the recovery process.

It had been six years on average since these patients had
their heart attacks, he said. "If it were just hastening
healing after a heart attack, you wouldn't necessarily
predict you'd be able to have a beneficial impact so long
after."

Laboratory experiments have shown the cells can rebuild
damaged heart cells, stimulate the formation of new blood
vessels and release chemicals that aid the healing process,
Zeiher said. Some doctors, however, noted that a key piece
of information was missing from the study: What exactly
were the bone marrow cells doing inside the heart?

"They provide no evidence that the injected [stem cells]
actually settled in the heart," Dr. Robert S. Schwartz,
deputy editor of the New England Journal, wrote in a
perspective piece accompanying the study. He added in an
interview: "Physicians should know how any therapy they
give works. That's fundamental."

Others found the mystery less bothersome.

"We still don't know how statins work, but I haven't
stopped prescribing them," Losordo said.

The German researchers also published results of a
companion study showing that patients who received bone
marrow cells within seven days of a heart attack improved
their blood-pumping efficiency by 11% after four months,
compared with a 6% boost for patients who got a placebo.

A third study, conducted by researchers in Norway, found
their stem cell method provided no improvement, although
the study was not precise enough to detect the small
increases in pumping efficiency reported by the German
team.

Adult Stem Cells May Treat Diabetes

Adult stem cells from human bone marrow may help treat type
2 diabetes.

That’s the early finding from lab tests on diabetic mice.
Tests on people haven’t been done.

The mouse studies are summed up in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers included biochemistry professor Darwin Prockop,
MD, PhD, who directs Tulane University’s Center for Gene
Therapy.

The researchers studied male mice with high blood sugar
like that in type 2 diabetes.

Half the mice received two injections of adult stem cells
taken from human bone marrow. With their defective immune
systems, the mice didn’t reject the human cells.

For comparison, the other mice didn’t get any injections.

Over the next month or so, mice treated with stem cells
made more insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar.

Stem cells turned up in the mice’s pancreas, which makes
insulin.

The stem-cell treated mice also had less kidney damage than
mice in the comparison group, the study shows.

Diabetes can cause kidney damage. Stem cells showed up in
the mice’s kidneys as well; the injected cells may have
helped repair damage, the researchers say.

It’s possible, but not yet certain, that stem cell shots
could boost insulin production and help fix damaged tissue
in people with diabetes, according to Prockop’s team.

Need more information visit this site:
http://www.stemcell-tech.com

BIOLOGY & MEDICINE

The Case for Adult Stem Cell Research

by Wolfgang Lillge, M.D.

(Full text of article from Winter 2001-2002 21st Century)
What Are Stem Cells, Exactly?

Problems of ‘Therapeutic Cloning’

Whoever Would Cure, Must Use Adult Stem Cells

Human Treatments

For more articles on biology and medicine, check the
subject index

Headline collageThe question of stem cells is currently the
dominant subject in the debate over biotechnology and human
genetics: Should we use embryonic stem cells or adult stem
cells for future medical therapies? Embryonic stem cells
are taken from a developing embryo at the blastocyst stage,
destroying the embryo, a developing human life. Adult stem
cells, on the other hand, are found in all tissues of the
growing human being and, according to latest reports, also
have the potential to transform themselves into practically
all other cell types, or revert to being stem cells with
greater reproductive capacity. Embryonic stem cells have
not yet been used for even one therapy, while adult stem
cells have already been successfully used in numerous
patients, including for cardiac infarction (death of some
of the heart tissue).

Stem cells are of wide interest for medicine, because they
have the potential, under suitable conditions, to develop
into almost all of the different types of cells. They
should therefore be able to repair damaged or defective
tissues (for example, destroyed insulin-producing cells in
the pancreas). Many of the so-called degenerative diseases,
for which there are as yet no effective therapies, could
then be alleviated or healed.

It is remarkable that in the debate–often carried on with
little competence–the potential of embryonic stem cells is
exaggerated in a one-sided way, while important moral
questions and issues of research strategy are passed over
in silence. Generally, advocates of research with embryonic
stem cells use as their main argument that such research
will enable us to cure all of the diseases that are
incurable today–cancer, AIDS, Alzheimers, multiple
sclerosis, and so forth. Faced with such a prospect, it is
supposed to be "acceptable" to "overlook" a few moral
problems.

On closer inspection, however, the much extolled vision of
the future turns out to be a case of completely empty
promises: Given the elementary state of research today, it
is by no means yet foreseeable, whether even one of the
hoped-for treatments can be realized. Basically, such
promised cures are a deliberate deception, for behind the
mirage of a coming medical wonderland, promoted by
interested parties, completely other research objectives
will be pursued that are to be kept out of public
discussion as much as possible.

Perfect candor should rule in stem cell research. This
requires that the scientist himself clearly establish the
moral limits of his activity and declare what the
consequences of research with embryonic stem cells really
are. In the process, no one can escape the fact that,
should one wish to use embryonic stem cells for
"therapeutic purposes," the very techniques will be
developed that will also be used for the cloning of human
beings, the making of human-animal hybrids, the
manipulation of germ lines, and the like–thus for
everything other than therapeutic purposes. Any coverup or
hypocrisy in this matter will very quickly reflect upon the
research as a whole.

What Are Stem Cells, Exactly? It is appropriate here to
sketch the characteristics of stem cells, and the overthrow
of some dogmas of developmental biology. Broadly speaking,
a stem cell is one that–in the course of cell division and
increase in the numbers of cells–is able to reproduce
itself and also mature into various specialized types of
cells. The stem cell with the greatest potential
(totipotential) is the fertilized egg cell, which is
capable of developing into a complete organism.

According to the usual–but actually very
doubtful–explanation, the fertilized egg cell has
totipotential up to the stage of division into eight cells,
and in later stages the cells retain only "pluripotential."
That is, they can form many different types of tissues, but
not the complete organism. Embryonic stem cells–that is,
those 50 cells within a blastocyst, which then continue to
develop into the embryo proper–have this pluripotential. In
the course of further specialization, stem cells of
individual tissues are formed, such as that of the bone
marrow, from which all the other kinds of blood cells
develop.

Behind this description lies the conception that a linear
process of differentiation is played out, in the
development of the individual, toward increasingly
"mature," specialized cells in the individual tissues, from
totipotentiality to tissue specificity. This process is
supposed to run only forward, but never backward. That is,
as soon as a cell has reached a certain degree of
"maturity," the way back to earlier stages of development
is closed off. So it is evident that a stem cell’s capacity
to perform is increasingly limited to specific functions,
and it loses, correspondingly, the manifold capabilities
still present in earlier developmental stages.

According to latest reports, however, this dogma of
developmental biology does not hold. Evidently,
tissue-specific stem cells have the ability–as has been
impressively demonstrated in experiments with animals–to
"transdifferentiate" themselves when in a different
environment–that is, to take on the cell functions of the
new tissue. Thus, neuronal stem cells of mice have
transformed themselves into blood stem cells and produced
blood cells. Indeed, there are indications of another
capability of adult stem cells: Apparently they have the
potential to be "reprogrammed." Not only can they adjust to
the specific conditions of a new tissue environment, but
they can even assume more generalized, earlier levels of
development, so that it even appears possible that they
become totipotent again.

in vitro mouse bone marrowLaboratory Virola in Ukraine has
demonstrated that bone marrow stromal cells in culture are
pluripotent–that is, they are able to differentiate into
cells of liver, bone, fat, cartilage, and so on.
Researchers at this laboratory have developed techniques to
differentiate in vitro mouse bone marrow stromal cells into
different types of neuronal and glial cells. The laboratory
is seeking funds to develop similar methods for human bone
marrow stromal cells. Laboratory Virola

Problems of ‘Therapeutic Cloning’ Until now, talk of a
possible source of human replacement tissue has centered on
embryonic stem cells, the production of which has been
extremely controversial. They are a typical product of
"consuming embryonic research," so called, because in
obtaining them from a human embryo produced by artificial
fertilization in vitro, the embryo is destroyed.

The most important research technique for which such
embryos are obtained is "therapeutic cloning." In
principle, a human egg cell is denucleated, that is, the
DNA is removed, and in its place is put the nucleus of a
somatic (body) cell. The egg cell is stimulated with a
short electrical pulse, and it then develops into the
blastocyst, from which stem cells can be removed. These are
identical with those of the donor of the somatic cell
nucleus.

Normally it goes unmentioned, that it is only a small step
from this so-called "therapeutic cloning" (because, it is
claimed, in this way a therapy for diseases can be
developed) to what is called "reproductive cloning." The
only difference is that the development of the embryo is
not interrupted in the early blastocyst stage; instead the
embryo is implanted in a uterus and a complete organism
develops–an exact genetic copy of the donor. "Dolly," the
first cloned sheep, was produced by this method, and here
is the basis for the widespread fear that the same method
that is used for "therapeutic cloning" can also be used for
the selective breeding of humans.

In addition to the obvious moral consideration, there are
still other serious disadvantages that make this path to
the development of human "replacement parts" appear to be
untenable.

The danger of tumors. So far there has been no solution to
the problem of developing in the laboratory an unmistakable
identifier for stem cells that can distinguish them
unequivocally from cancer cells. For this reason, it is
also not possible to produce sufficiently pure cell
cultures from stem cells. So far, with embryonic mouse stem
cells, a purity of only 80 percent has been achieved. That
is in no way sufficient for cell transplantation as a human
therapy. In a cell culture for therapeutic purposes, there
must not be a single undifferentiated cell, since it can
lead to unregulated growth, in this case to the formation
of teratomas, a cancerous tumor derived from the germ
layers. This problem would not be expected with adult stem
cells, because of their greater differentiation.

Genetic instability. Only recently a further problem has
emerged. Fundamental doubt of the suitability of embryonic
stem cells for transplantation has come to the surface
because of the genetic instability of cloned cells.

Cloned animals like Dolly give the outward appearance of
full health, but the probability of their having numerous
genetic defects is very high. Moreover, the entire cloning
procedure is extremely ineffective. Most cloned animals die
before birth, and of those born alive, not even half
survive for three weeks. In the best case, there is a
success rate of 3 to 4 percent.

One of the reasons for this high failure rate has now been
discovered by the German scientist Rudolf Jaenisch at the
Institute for Biomedical Research at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, and his colleague, Ryuzo
Yanagimachi. Their conception is that in cloning–that is,
when the nucleus of a somatic cell is inserted into a
denucleated egg cell–the reprogramming of the genes does
not proceed properly, so that not all of the genes that are
necessary to the early phase of embryonic development, are
activated. Even when cloned animals survive at all,
probably every clone would have subtle genetic
abnormalities that would frequently become noticeable only
later in life.

Jaenisch performed his experiments with mice that had been
cloned using embryonic stem cells in place of the somatic
cells, which produces better results. But to his surprise,
the reprogramming of the inserted genetic material by the
embryonic cells proceeded in a very unregulated way. There
were no two clones in which the same pattern of gene
activation was found, and Jaenisch is convinced that the
use of embryonic stem cells was clearly responsible.

What consequences follow from this for the therapeutic use
of human embryonic stem cells–consequences that will in
fact be multiplied through cloning–are not yet foreseeable.
NeuroblastsNeuroblasts differentiated from bone marrow
stromal cells by Laboratory Virola. Laboratory Virola
Whoever Would Cure, Must Use Adult Stem Cells It has been
known for about 30 years that stem cells are present in the
tissue of the adult, but it was assumed that they could
only form cells of a particular tissue. That is,
reprogramming them was considered impossible. In recent
years, however, pluripotent stem cells were discovered in
various human tissues–in the spinal cord, in the brain, in
the mesenchyme (connective tissue) of various organs, and
in the blood of the umbilical cord. These pluripotent stem
cells are capable of forming several cell types–principally
blood, muscle, and nerve cells. It has been possible to
recognize, select, and develop them to the point that they
form mature cell types with the help of growth factors and
regulating proteins.

This shows that in tissues of the body, adult stem cells
possess a much greater potential for differentiation than
previously assumed. This knowledge must be brought into the
public consciousness with all possible emphasis. If stem
cell research were really only meant for therapeutic uses,
which it most obviously should be, adult stem cells would
promise a very productive research field–and beyond that, a
possibility, without moral objection, to discover
fundamentals of the dynamics of tissue differentiation.

It has become clear from transplantation experiments with
animals, that stem cells of a particular tissue can develop
into cells of a completely different kind. Thus, bone
marrow stem cells have been induced to become brain cells,
but also liver cells.

Adult stem cells obviously have a universal program for
division that is common to all the kinds of tissue stem
cells, and makes them mutually interchangeable. This was
discovered by Alexei Terskikh at Stanford University School
of Medicine in California. He was able to prove that adult
stem cells of blood-forming tissues, and of the brain,
activate the same genes, in order to preserve their status
as stem cells.

In May 2001, a further, spectacular experiment was
reported, which was carried out on mice by scientists at
Yale University. The researchers obtained stem cells from
the bone marrow of male mice, and injected it into females
whose own marrow had been destroyed by radioactive
irradiation. Eleven months later, the male stem cells
(identifiable through the male Y-chromosome) were found not
only in the females’ bone marrow, but also in their blood,
and in their gut, lung, and skin tissues.

If these observations are correct and are confirmed by
other teams of scientists, science should concentrate on
research with adult stem cells and renounce further
experiments with the embryonic.

Human Treatments Moreover, very promising treatments of
serious diseases with adult stem cells have already been
tried. The special advantage is that there are no rejection
reactions, because the cells are from the same body.

Of longer standing is treatment with bone marrow stem
cells. The treatment comes into play when, for example, a
patient has lost his or her blood-forming tissue through
radiation or high-dose chemotherapy. Previously removed
bone marrow stem cells are then retransplanted, and are
able to resume the formation of blood cells.

In 2001, however, a team of doctors at the Duesseldorf
University Clinic carried out a treatment of very
far-reaching consequences. For the first time, they treated
a cardiac infarct patient with stem cells from his own
body. The cardiologist, Prof. Bodo Eckehard Strauer, is
sure that the stem cells from the patient’s bone marrow,
after injection into the infarct zone, autonomously
converted to heart muscle. The functioning of the severely
damaged heart clearly improved within a few weeks.

Four days after the infarction, the doctors took bone
marrow from the patient’s pelvis using local anesthesia.
The stem cells in the marrow were concentrated outside of
the body and implanted in the infarct area the next day
with a special technique via a coronary artery. However,
the doctors could not yet take cardiac tissue to prove
definitively that the implanted blood stem cells had
converted to heart muscle cells. But, according to Strauer,
there is no other way to explain the marked improvement in
the patient’s condition. After this first successful
operation, six more patients have already been treated with
their own stem cells, with similarly positive results.

There are also reports of successful treatments with adult
stem cells in cases of Crohn’s disease (a chronic infection
of the gut), thalassemia (a blood disease), and a rare skin
disease. And–despite the fact that basic research with
adult stem cells is in its earliest beginnings and is in no
way being promoted with urgency–there have been a growing
number of reports lately of experiments with animals, from
which it emerges that adult stem cells can successfully
transform themselves into differentiated cells of organs of
many kinds.

In contrast, reports of successful conversions of embryonic
stem cells are very infrequent and cautious. Thus, we find
in Science of Dec. 1, 2000 (Vol. 290, pp. 1672-1674): "In
contrast, the human embryonic stem cells and fetal germ
cells that made headlines in November 1998 because they
can, in theory, develop into any cell type have so far
produced relatively modest results. Only a few papers and
meeting reports have emerged from the handful of labs that
work with human pluripotent cells. . . . The work suggests
that it will not be simple to produce the pure populations
of certain cell types that would be required for safe and
reliable cell therapies. . . ."

This is the restrained language used by established science
to describe a truly disastrous set of results.

There are, of course, still substantial problems to be
overcome, even with adult stem cells: They are relatively
rare, and are hard to find with the techniques used so far.
They are also not very easy to culture outside of the body.
It was therefore an important advance that Australian
researchers of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of
Medical Research have now found a way to isolate nerve stem
cells with "extreme purity" from the brains of mice. In
Nature of August 16, 2001 (Vol. 412, pp. 736-739), they
reported obtaining a culture of 80 percent purity, compared
to a previous rate of 5 percent at best.

It is now urgently necessary to tackle the research in
precisely this direction, in order to find out the exact
conditions under which the differentiation of stem cells
comes about and how, in detail, it proceeds. Only by this
morally unassailable route will it be possible to develop
new therapies for serious, heretofore incurable diseases,
and beyond that, to improve our understanding of the
development of life itself.

http://www.stemcell-tech.com

Wolfgang Lillge is the Editor-in-Chief of the
German-language Fusion magazine. His article appeared in
the Sept.-October 2001 issue of Fusion, and was translated
into English by David Cherry.

StemEnhance and Athletic Training

By Christian Drapeau

The closest runner was more than 2 miles behind Nina Kraft
when she crossed the finish line of the Ironman Triatholon
in Hawaii, on October 16, 2004.

But instead of feeling triumphant, she kept her head down
and barely looked up at the cheering crowd. A few weeks
later, results showed she had tested positive for
recombinant erythropoietin, a drug that boosts endurance.
"I screwed up," she told the press. "I never really
rejoiced over the victory in Hawaii. I was ashamed the
entire time, especially in front of my family. I cheated."
Since then, doping has become an increasing problem in
competitive and Olympic sports.

So just about anytime an athlete is introduced to
StemEnhance, the first question is, "Does it contain a
stimulant? Will it show on testing for doping?" A number of
years ago AFA had been tested for doping in horses, after a
few trainers saw how large amounts of AFA helped horses on
the race track. But because of the attention given to the
problem of doping over the last few years, passing the
doping test in horses was not enough for top athletes. So
we recently contacted international agencies involved in
testing for doping and tested StemEnhance.

Results: StemEnhance is safe for athletes.

But why would a healthy athlete be interested in
StemEnhance? We are so used to thinking of health as the
absence of disease, and athletes are the picture of health.
To understand why athletes welcome StemEnhance, we need to
think of health as the very optimal state of the body in
order to achieve highest performance. From this point of
view, supporting stem cells constitutes a unique training
and performance strategy.

A little over a year ago, I received a letter from two high
school students in Florida, Hanna and Ilisa Lee, asking if
I would be interested in helping them in a project for the
local Science fair. In their letter, they made the case
that if stem cells could travel to muscles and help muscles
recover faster after exercise, then the ability to exercise
the day after an intense workout would be greater.
Therefore, everday athletes could go further in their
training, turning in greater performances. Consequently,
athletes taking StemEnhance should imporve much faster. I
was impressed. These two teenages understood it all! I
asked them for a detailed protocol and we signed an
agreement. (My main motivation for a signed agreement was
that I wanted them to take the project really seriously. A
serious approach was the best I could do to foster the
development of these two young scientists. Their project
was a great opportunity for them to experience the
excitment of scientific investigation.)

They went to work on their project and did a fabulous job.
They documented how rowers at the University of Florida
achieved greater performance over time when taking
StemEnhance, compared to teammates not taking StemEnhance.
Hanna and Ilisa's science project ended up serving as the
preliminary work for a more in-depth controlled study
currently being carried out by an expert in exercise
physiology.

Now, let us look at the use of StemEnhance by athletes in
more detail. In theory, how may StemEnhance contribute to
giving athletes an "extra edge?" To understand this
relationship, we need to look at the physiology of athletic
training. When an athlete goes through saily training with
maximum effort, numerous microscopic lesions take place in
muscles, tendons and ligaments. These microscopic lesions
rapidly become the sites of discomfort. The body's reaction
to this discomfort produces molecules that create slight
local edema in an attempt to increase blood flow, nutrient
delivery and cellular circulation, as well as lymphatic
drainage to eliminate cellular debris. But this process
also creates molecules that mediate discomfort, and the
goal of discomfort is to limit the person's movements to
maximise the recovery process. The process of discomfort is
very interesting, as it is designed to limit the exposure
of further stress. A muscle that has micro-lesions will not
contract to the fullest, because the body will
neurologically inhibit muscle contraction to prevent
further discomfort. But if a person is an athlete in
training, he or she take some pain killer and goes through
more training the following day, creating more lesions. As
the process continues day after day, the athlete gradually
develops a chronic situation that limits the ability to
train to the fullest.

As part of the body's reaction to training stress, the
micro-lesions also release compounds that attract stem
cells, as stem cells carry out their role of daily renewal.
The greater the number of circulating stem cells, the
greater the number of stem cells that are available to
migrate to the recovering muscles. As stem cells migrate
into the muslce and become muscle cells, they may
accelerate the process of recovery after intense workouts.
As a conmsequence, the day after training by an athlete
using StemEnhance, the muslces may be better prepared for
an extra workout and the person may be able to exercise to
a greater extent. The difference may be small when viewed
day to day, but the difference can accumulate. As a result,
the ability to train a little bit more everyday may lead to
significant differences over time. StemEnhance does not
promote greater muscle mass or greater strength and it des
not support some hormonal process; it simply assists the
muscles, ligaments, tendons and connective tissue in their
process of recovery after intensive workouts, perhaps
allowing athletes to train everyday to the fullest, so they
may tap more effectively into their own potential.

I remember that years ago -- before any knowledge of the
effect AFA has on stem cells -- Dan O'Brien, 1996
Decathalon Gold Medallist was sharing in an interview that
the only supplement he was consuming was large quantities
of AFA. He claimed, "all it does is give me an edge every
day." He may not have known exactly how AFA worked in his
body, but he knew that AFA probably helped him become world
champion.

These days an increasing number of athletes are including
StemEnhance as part of their winning strategies. With the
intense scrutiny athletes undergo to remain fierce
competitors without the use of prohibited performance
enhancing drugs, StemEnhance -- a 5:1 concentration of AFA
will prove a unique tool to support optimum training for
top performance. As a result, the number of athletes using
it will certainly increase, as StemEnhance makes its
official appearance on lists of safe supplements for
athletes. We await with great anticipation the results of
the study investigating the effect of StemEnhance on
performance by athletes. Significantly positive results
from this study -- which is being conducted by an expert in
the field of exercise physiology -- will help to confirm
the evidence gathered by Hanna and Ilisa, as well as the
experience of the many athletes who use StemEnhance each
day as part of their training regimen.

Aphanizomenon Flos Aquae

By Christian Drapeau

We often receive the question: Why is AFA at times referred
to as blue-green algae while at other times it is called a
cyanobacteria or a cyanophyta? Why the different names?

A large field of science is the field of nomenclature or
how to name living things. This science, called taxonomy,
was developed by Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), and is based on
the classification of living organisms on the basis of
physical characteristics, for the most part.

This system of nomenclature comprises seven levels of \
classification: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family,
genus, and species. With this naming system, the entire
description of an organism is contained in its name,
whether it is a bacterium, a fungus, a flower or an animal.
In common practice, however, most living organisms are
named using only their genus and species.

For example, the monarch butterfly is called Danaus
plexippus, a dog is Canis familiaris, a wolf Canis lupus, a
man Homo sapiens, and the blue-green algae we know is
Aphanizomenon flosaquae. Since this system of taxonomy is
largely based on physical characteristics, plants or
animals with similar characteristics have similar names.

For example, insects that have eight legs and a two-segment
body are Arachnidae or spiders. A scorpion is called
Scorpionida arachnida and a common spider is Araneae
arachnida. A fruit having one large pit is called Prunus. A
peach is Prunus persica and an apricot is Prunus armeniaca.
Likewise, a beautiful plant growing in water was originally
called Aphanizomenon flos-aquae, or "invisible flower of
water."

Aphanizomenon is a genus of water plants characterized by
their filamentous colony-forming organization with
heterocysts that can fix atmospheric nitrogen. To the first
observers, Aphanizomenon was a plant like algae, since it
carried the distinct green color of chlorophyll.

As it contained the unique blue pigment phycocyanin, it was
commonly called a blue-green algae, or -- more technically
-- cyanophyta, which means "blue plant." But when the
microscope was developed and AFA was first viewed under
magnification, scientists observed that it did not contain
a nucleus, a characteristic shared by all bacteria. Since
it did contain phycocyanin, it was referred to as
cyanobacteria.

On the basis of these observations, AFA was defined at the
time as both a plant (because of its chlorophyll content)
and a bacterium (because of its cytoplasmic DNA). But
later, with advances in biochemistry, another development
made the story yet a little more complex.

Scientists observed that AFA contained in its membrane a
molecule similar to glycogen, a polysaccharide made by
animal cells. Upon this characteristic, one could classify
AFA as partly an animal. So AFA is a bacterium or a plant
-- and to some extent an animal -- and the name one decides
to give it depends on the angle from which one wants to
look at it.

It is in our human nature to classify and name things.
Giving names to things allows us to talk about them; it is
an important part of relating among ourselves. But there is
a caveat to classifying things: As we classify objects, we
then relate more to the classification than to the objects
themselves.

At times people have expressed a concern because AFA is a
bacterium. As we all know, there are a number of bacteria
that can carry very serious diseases. But to think of AFA
as a pathogen because it is a bacterium would be a little
like thinking that a house cat is dangerous because both
fearsome tigers and domestic cats are felines, or that a
penguin has to be able to fly because it is a bird.

You can see that too much generalization within any
taxonomy can lead to serious misunderstandings!

Many bacteria are beneficial to health, and a number of
bacteria are essential to health. In the same way, AFA is a
beneficial microorganism. Whether AFA is called a plant or
a bacterium is truly just a matter of classification.
Therefore, we are all accurate when we call AFA a
cyanobacterium (blue bacterium) OR a cyanophyta (blue
plant) OR cyanophycea (blue seaweed). The best way to refer
to AFA, however, is this:

It is a beautiful aquatic plant which, when concentrated in
our unique and patented product, StemEnhance, enhances stem
cell physiology.

Go to StemEnhance