Posted by Chris M. on 3/18/2008, 11:49 pm
Link: Awaken stem cells and get the working...
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There is great anticipation on all our parts about stem cell research and hope that it will benefit our lungs down the road.
There are, right now, listed under Clincal trials, 165 trials reported working on stem cells which have listed lungs as a possible benefit from their study.
Clinical research has the difficulty of needing human persons to see if the proceedure will work, and that means it is, for us, tediously slow and frustrating.
There is a huge clamor to force more dollars into public research, but seriously folks, they know how to retrieve stem cells from humans, multiply them and are now searching for ways to introduce them effectively. That doesn't need huge new dollars, it needs time and patience.
There are no Doctors being refused dollars for treating humans, but ethically, until we see success within the groups in studies such as these 165 studies few ethical Doctors would force experimenting on patients who are surviving well. If it's not ethical to treat a patient, all the dollars mean nothing. We are just going to need to be patient.
In English, this means we are studying the effects of stem cells given to patients who's other treatments could perhaps be augmented by stems cells. In short, as they find out how our bodies respond to stem cells, the treatments can then be ethically offered to larger groups of patients.
Last time we checked a Joshua Hare, M.D. was adding stem cell therapy to hearts. This year there are now 4 Doctors studies within that program and instead of stem cells going only to failing hearts, it's being added to studies of those getting bypass surgery. (Complete with controls, and wow, do we wish them well) The original study helped both hearts and lung function.
Below is a study associated with an eye facility that has connections to Harvard University. Regenerating activity with the human eye on stem cells of the retina, with two different substances that works in animals.
OK, OK, this isn't jumping to our lungs, but don't tell that to folks with eyesight loss. If the medium used to transfer and assist the process works, it may help with other patients and studies.
But, we ARE seeing trials in humans using stem cells and while our lung tissues are complicated, all those studies mention lungs as being an associated area of interest.
What all this means is that we need to stay as fit as possible, extend our lives with good care,nutrition, exercise, and remain with a positive attitude because you just never know when it leap frogs forward to our condition.
I might add, there are now several studies using the mixing of bone marrow cells BEFORE transplantation which may just take away all the problems with rejection in lung transplantation. Rejection is really the toughest part of translantation. If rejection becomes a non issue, there may be new worlds opening for many, many patients.
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