Send in the Clones

My friend Janet Zucker, film producer extraordinaire, is known in some circles as a stem cell zealot-guru, a life focus born of her daughter’s struggles with type 1 diabetes. She has raised awareness, money and passion for the growing field of stem cell research… and if you want to know where science and medicine have reached at any given moment, Janet’s your gal. With health issues in my own family, stem cells may be the only path for life-sustaining solutions for some in my world, so naturally Janet has become a resource.

Most of us think that medical doctors are only ones leading this research charge, but while MD’s are clearly very much in this mix, they have been joined in this cutting-edge research by an army of cellular biologists. We’ve mapped the human genome and we are clearly on the path of finding ways to regenerate failed organs and body parts to give new life to old ailments and injuries. Can we generate a pancreas that can handle blood sugar levels and end diabetes? Will we be able to regenerate parts of the human heart decimated by a heart attack? Can an auto-immune-impaired body be given a new disease-fighting series of restored organs to allow life without constant injections and infusions? Can dialysis become a distant memory as kidney capacity is restored?

Janet will tell you, “not yet,” but she will also fill your heart with hope as medical science is beginning to find examples of what we can do or will in the very near future be able to provide to those in need. It’s not about whether or not stem cells work; it’s about targeting stem cells to replace or restore a specific organ or body part. So Janet sent me a piece on MSNBC’s website (September 11^th) that drilled down on what researchers are beginning to do with human beings, particularly soldiers whose bodies have been wracked with the destruction from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that have blown away significant sections of their bodies.

The stories of success are beginning to roll out. Take for example the work of Dr. Anthony Atala at Wake Forest University. “He’s already grown bladders using a patient’s own cells, and he’s made penises that rabbits were able to put to their proper use, fathering litters of new little bunnies. He hopes to use this expertise to help rebuild the bodies of veterans wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as men and boys injured in car accidents… Atala is one of the pioneers of regenerative medicine. But the field has taken off in a big way, attracting biotechnology companies, the U.S. military and academic labs, which are working to literally make the blind see and the lame walk again. They’re perfecting spray-on skin and aim to mass-produce new body parts using bioprinters based on the jet printers attached to your home computer.

“‘Right now, the way these organs are made is creating them one by one. By bringing the bioprinting in, we can scale it up,’ says Atala, whose lab has contracts with the four-year-old Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM), biotechnology companies and private foundations… All of this technology is years away from the doctor's office. The most advanced treatments have just begun the very earliest stages of human testing. But all evidence points to the tantalizing prospect of grow-your-own organs and possibly even limbs within a decade or so, and some approaches, such as muscle transplants and spray-on skin, are helping a lucky few now.” MSNBC. Most of his techniques involve stem cells from the patient him or herself. Spray on skin, noted above, starts with a micro-thin layer based on the patient’s own genetic code and if performed properly, generates further skin growth fairly quickly.

Facial disfigurement has also seen significant progress as spray on skin applied over a pre-shaped ear form and attached to the patient’s own skin has been successfully used to create a new “ear” where the ugly impact of an IED explosion destroyed the old one. For the soldiers who sacrificed their bodies in combat, this surgery is nothing short of a miracle.

But wait, as the TV huckster would tell you, there’s more: “In January, scientists at Advanced Cell Technology, a company based in Massachusetts, reported they had used some of these human embryonic stem cells to partially restore vision in two legally blind patients. First they ‘trained’ the cells by incubating them in a nourishing soup of chemicals designed to make them differentiate into retinal cells. The stem cells, infused directly into the eye, regenerated cells known as retinal pigment epithelium cells.” MSNBC.

And while we are making progress, there are setbacks that we don’t fully understand: “[Experiments have begun with] Lou Gehrig’s disease, medically known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS. It attacks nerves called motor neurons, gradually and inexorably paralyzing its victims. It’s always fatal as patients lose every bit of their ability to move, even to breathe. There’s no treatment and no cure… [40-year-old] Ted Harada had a second infusion of stem cells last [in August]. Harada is hopeful enough to have tried the highly experimental treatment not once but twice. It’s painful – surgeons have to cut open his spine and infuse the stem cells right into his spinal fluid. But the last time Harada was treated, he went from walking with a cane to running with his kids – a transformation that made him an instant television celebrity.

“‘The results I saw were nothing short of miraculous,’ says Harada, who lives in Georgia and who got treated at Emory University. ‘Within two weeks I started feeling my legs getting better. I was afraid it would be a dream and I would wake up and it would be gone again.’… And the effects did gradually wear off, Harada says. ‘All of a sudden I started noticing fatigue in my legs,’ he told NBC News. ‘I started noticing trembling, shaking in my legs. If you do a lot of weight lifting you know that rubbery feeling your legs get when they are spent?’ That’s how he felt.” MSNBC We have move forward significantly, but for those who cling to an diminished and impair lifespan, they dream of more… faster.

I’m Peter Dekom, and our ability to find these solutions offers hope to millions plus the promise of new jobs in a new technology that saves and improves the human condition.