The Stem Cell Debate …………….And a Challenge!

It’s a subject that divides the political landscape, a medical debate that flows through to the whole community. Unless you are diabetic!

Researchers have cured diabetes in mice by injecting bone marrow stem cells into the bloodstream. The stem cells seek out damaged tissue in the pancreas, where they appear to trigger the growth of new cells. If bone marrow stem cells have the same effect in humans with diabetes, they could be used to treat patients straightaway.

“This is a very significant study,” says Joel Habener of Harvard Medical School in Boston, who studies stem cells in the pancreas. “It suggests that there is something in the bone marrow that can stimulate the pancreatic stem cells to regenerate.”

It can take decades to bring a new drug to the marketplace. But bone marrow transplants have been used for years to treat a host of blood disorders, including leukaemia and sickle cell disease. They have been proven safe and would require no government approval for use as a possible diabetes treatment in humans.

“There’s nothing to prevent people from trying this in humans,” says Habener. “People with diabetes have been waiting for a cure for years and years. Why not go ahead and try?”

The Current Status

That was a couple of years ago – but its back in the news again. The Prime Minister allowed a conscience vote in the parliament over whether or not that ban should be lifted. The ban was lifted last December. The Victorian Parliament votes this week.

Meanwhile, research in the US has slowed right down …   Small companies working to develop human embryonic stem cell therapies face innumerable challenges when looking for funding, according to several industry executives at the second annual Stem Cell Meeting in San Francisco on Monday.

Unlike the traditional biotechnology sector, in which government agencies provide primary funding before early-stage venture capitalists move in to invest and assume risk, the lack of support from U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration has led stem cell research to be viewed as too risky an investment, the executives said.

Last August on Channel Nine’s Sunday, Kristine Lumb talked to leading experts representing both sides of the debate.

Here is what Elizabeth Finkel said….

ELIZABETH FINKEL, BIOCHEMIST, SCIENCE WRITER, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR COSMOS MAGAZINE:

“We’re not talking about copying people; we’re talking about copying their cells. if you for instance had type one diabetes what we would hope to be able to do is take one of your skin cells, and if we imaged that everyone of your cells is running a program, what is doing the programming, is like a little hard disk inside the cell called the nucleus.

We can reboot that little hard disk back to it’s original operating program where it could run all programs, so we would take that skin nucleus, and we would inject it into one of your own eggs whose own nucleus had been removed and now that the contents of your egg would reboot your skin nucleus and it would start developing as if it were a little embryo clone of you, a very primitive little embryo clone of you. It would then be used to derive embryonic stem cells and those stem cells would be coaxed to become pancreatic cells, insulin producing pancreatic cells and you would be able to have a graft of your own cells, no anti rejection drugs required.”

The International Society for Stem Cell Research

Co-sponsored by the Australian Stem Cell Centre (ASCC), this year’s ISSCR Annual Meeting will be held in the tropical city of Cairns in June.

The Biotechnology Centre of Excellence programme, the Australian Stem Cell Centre, will receive an additional $30.4 million from the Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources, and $27.5 million from the Australian Research Council (ARC). This brings the total funding from the Australian Government to $57.9 million over five years from 2006–07 to 2010–11.

The Challenge

I must be missing something – everything seems to be in place. We do have funds in Australia and the expertise.

Joel Habener of Harvard Medical School put it best….

“There’s nothing to prevent people from trying this in humans. People with diabetes have been waiting for a cure for years and years. Why not go ahead and try?”

Why not?

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