Comments on: Mesenchymal Stem Cells: A Diverse Family, Large and Still Growing

By: Neha Aggarwal

Neha Aggarwal — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 07:48:50 +0000

Umbilical cord blood from newborn babies can be used to produce embryonic-like cells that can potentially treat diseases and debilitating conditions.
Now it is possible to differentiate cord blood cells into a type of lung cell. These cells help to repair the airway in lungs after injury. This is a significant discovery because until now the use of brain stem cells was the only way to conduct viable research of this type. In the future, researchers might be able to examine cord blood from babies with lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis and develop better treatments. They will be able to work with umbilical cord blood cells to better understand lung development and to test new drugs.
Mesenchymal stem cells obtained from full-term umbilical cord blood can potentially be used to repair tissue and develop bone and cartilage. As a result, patients can recover faster, thus preventing kidney complications arising from tissue damage. These findings bring new hope to those who suffer from acute kidney failure, a life threatening condition. Acute renal failure occurs when the kidneys are unable to get rid of waste and urine.
Lupus is a disease that affects more than 1.5 million Americans. It is an inflammatory disease that affects the skin, joints and kidneys. Lupus can be life threatening when it attacks major organs such as the kidneys. Stem cell transplant is used to treat patients with severe lupus. In a study of 50 patients who underwent stem cell transplant at Northwestern Hospital in Chicago, 50 percent were free from the disease after five years. The overall survival rate is 84%. Stem cell transplantation offers a ray of hope to lupus sufferers who have failed conventional treatments.
Cord blood stem cell overcomes most of the problems associated with embryonic stem cell research. The latter comes under much scrutiny and debate. It is hard to obtain sufficient stem cells from embryos and the right tissue type for a patient. Cord blood stem cells can be produced and there is more likelihood of finding the right tissue type given a birth rate of 100 million babies a year worldwide.
Cord blood stem cell transplant is becoming increasingly important for treatment of life-threatening diseases and debilitating conditions. Umbilical cord blood stem cells are less prone to rejection than bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cells.

By: admin

admin — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:08:15 +0000

Thank you for such a thorough, informative comment! I’m honored to have an expert, professor of mesenchymal stem cells give feedback on these cells and their recent, cutting-edge clinical applications. Thank you!

By: Donald Phinney

Donald Phinney — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:36:26 +0000

Human MSCs are being evaluated in a large number of clinical trials for a variety of indications. Initially, the cells were used to treat brittle bone diseases with reasonable success. Most recenlty, their ability to block inflammation and modulate immune cell function is being specifically exploited in clincial trials. Several phase I and II trials have demonstrated real efficacy in treating graft versus host disease and acute kidney failure. Most recenlty, several phase I trails have evaluated MSCs for treatment of stroke. The next few years should see a wealth of new clincial data forthcoming, which may lead to real advances in stem cell-based therapeis. @stefan @stefan

By: All Things Stem Cell » Bioengineering Organs and Tissues with Stem Cells: Recent Breakthroughs

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:15:26 +0000

[...] chondrocytes the researchers removed bone marrow from the patient and isolated out a population of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). The MSCs were induced to differentiate into, or become, chondrocytes using a standard protocol [...]

By: All Things Stem Cell » Limb Regeneration May Require Less Potent Stem Cells Than Previously Thought

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 07:23:26 +0000

[...] was thought that at this time in the regenerative process other resident cells below the WE become multipotent mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) (see Figure). These eventually form a mass of MSCs called a blastema (Mescher, 1996; Brockes [...]

By: admin

admin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 04:50:10 +0000

Hi, Stefan. Thank you for the comment. That is a good point to raise as much work with stem cells has been done in models and has yet to make its way to clinical studies in humans.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) actually has a website that lists clinical trials going on worldwide (http://clinicaltrials.gov). Doing a search for mesenchymal stem cells, I found 82 reported studies (though many are not in the U.S.). There are a wide variety of clinical studies going on with mesenchymal stem cells, including treating diabetes, multiple sclerosis, graft-versus-host disease, and many more.

There is also a helpful review on this subject that came out last year which goes into more technical details:

Klingemann, H., Matzilevich, D., Marchand, J. Mesenchymal Stem Cells – Sources and Clinical Applications. Transfus Med Hemother. 2008. 35:272–277.
View Article

Thank you for reading and for the insightful point raised! I hope this helps answer your query.

By: stefan

stefan — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:39:47 +0000

thanks for the post… very informative.

If you happen to know of any therapies that have been conducted on humans specifically using MSCs, I’d be very interested to know about this.

Best regards,

Stefan

By: All Things Stem Cell » Cancer Stem Cells: A Possible Path to a Cure

All Things Stem Cell » Cancer Stem Cells: A Possible Path to a Cure — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:58:40 +0000

[...] cell types (Eramo et al., 2007). CD44 is expressed in hematopoietic (Morrison et al., 1995) and mesenchymal (Pittenger et al., 1999; Mitchell et al., 2006) stem cells. As becomes apparent when comparing [...]

By: All Things Stem Cell » Stem Cells Discovered in Menstrual Blood: Endometrial Regenerative Stem Cells

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 01:18:15 +0000

[...] stem cells from the intact endometrium appear to be mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs, as discussed earlier), ERCs do not; they are distinctly different not only in their undifferentiated state, but in the [...]