Just three days after the solemn oath of U.S. President Barack Obama, the agency (FDA ) regulating the use of drugs in that country, as a division within the Department of Health, announced the approval of the first clinical trial Phase I aimed to assess the efficacy of embryonic stem cells implanted in SCI. Despite the similarities, this announcement should be seen as a triumph of science, not politics. Clinical research that will begin this summer will tell if the treatment is effective or not and especially if you have adequate safeguards for the patient.
This first clinical trial has its first record in the work of James A. Thomson University of Wisconsin in 1998 published in the journal Science. In his research Thomson described the derivation of pluripotent embryonic stem cells human from blastocysts resulting from processes of in vitro fertilization . This work led him to establish several lines of human embryonic cells that despite Bush's restrictions, could be used for basic research with federal funds. Subsequently, the most important works that support this first clinical trial group are due to Hans S. Keirstead at the University of California. This group demonstrated in 2005 that embryonic cells of a lines established by Thomson, the line H7 was able after 42 days of culture controlled with high efficiency to differentiate into oligodendrocyte precursors . This cell line allows synthesize myelin membranes that surround the axons allowing nerve conduction, responsible among other things, the movement of our muscles. The cell population, resulting from the process of differentiation in culture, lacked the other hand, marking of undifferentiated cells that may be responsible, ultimately, the formation of tumors after implants. When they injected the cells obtained from bone marrow Both in transgenic mice devoid of myelin, and more recently in rats that had experienced an acute spinal cord injury, demonstrated the re-myelination of axons and partly damaged, the recovery of locomotor parameters. As argued by the promoters of this study, there is no perfect clinical trial to begin with an assessment of these characteristics, the important thing is what the results tell us in the future. We all remember the actor Christopher Reeve , the star in the Superman movies, who spent the last years of his life in a wheelchair after an accident that fractured his spinal cord in the area cervical. The actor was a tireless advocate for the use of embryonic cells and without doubt the hope of many people as he suffers a spinal cord injury depends on the progress of these studies. In any case, this is a specific test for a particular type of application of embryonic stem cells. The regenerative medicine is just beginning.
This first clinical trial has its first record in the work of James A. Thomson University of Wisconsin in 1998 published in the journal Science. In his research Thomson described the derivation of pluripotent embryonic stem cells human from blastocysts resulting from processes of in vitro fertilization . This work led him to establish several lines of human embryonic cells that despite Bush's restrictions, could be used for basic research with federal funds. Subsequently, the most important works that support this first clinical trial group are due to Hans S. Keirstead at the University of California. This group demonstrated in 2005 that embryonic cells of a lines established by Thomson, the line H7 was able after 42 days of culture controlled with high efficiency to differentiate into oligodendrocyte precursors . This cell line allows synthesize myelin membranes that surround the axons allowing nerve conduction, responsible among other things, the movement of our muscles. The cell population, resulting from the process of differentiation in culture, lacked the other hand, marking of undifferentiated cells that may be responsible, ultimately, the formation of tumors after implants. When they injected the cells obtained from bone marrow Both in transgenic mice devoid of myelin, and more recently in rats that had experienced an acute spinal cord injury, demonstrated the re-myelination of axons and partly damaged, the recovery of locomotor parameters. As argued by the promoters of this study, there is no perfect clinical trial to begin with an assessment of these characteristics, the important thing is what the results tell us in the future. We all remember the actor Christopher Reeve , the star in the Superman movies, who spent the last years of his life in a wheelchair after an accident that fractured his spinal cord in the area cervical. The actor was a tireless advocate for the use of embryonic cells and without doubt the hope of many people as he suffers a spinal cord injury depends on the progress of these studies. In any case, this is a specific test for a particular type of application of embryonic stem cells. The regenerative medicine is just beginning.
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