Following on from one of my previous entries on circulating stem cells' ineffectiveness for heart disease, another study is now underway to see if stem cells obtained from a healthy donor will help patients who have suffered a heart attack.
Essentially, no one knows if this procedure will work any better than the mobilized autologous (patient's own) stem cells and one of the clinicians, Dr. Gary Schaer admits that this technology is still in its infancy. However, 16 centres are involved in the study- which is a lot!- and the results could be very interesting even if it turned out negative (but the fact that they are conducting it... are they onto something already?)
The stem cells they obtain will be matched to the donor and are not expected to trigger a rejection response. They have enrolled 54 patients into the study, where 36 patients will receive stem cells and the remaining 18 will receive a placebo. Each patient will receive 5 million stem cells for each Kg of body weight- this is an interesting number, its about the same number that oncologists give for an autologous transplant for leukemia. The major difference here though, is that it is unclear whether any drugs will be administered prior or during the treatment process.
I'm wondering why allogeneic stem cells? Is this to alleviate stress on collecting from the same patient who has the condition? Or maybe paving the way that younger/healthy donor cells, harvested at a time of no illness may yield positive results?
Let's hope that we'll have some good news on the first volunteer, 76 year-old Rev. Eugene Carter of Elgin who received the first infusion eight days after his heart attack. Keep a lookout for the donor's age.
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2 comments:
Interesting... so compared to that study in Europe, the only difference is that in this case the stem cells will be taken from relatively young and healthy patients? ... but will again not be specifically administered at the site of damage??
How does Stemlife administer its procedures in Malaysia?
p.s. I think it would be helpful if here or on your website you initiated a glossary of terms... I don't know what allogenic means!
My apologies, allogeneic means that the stem cells are not your own, but obtained from another matching human being. I'll try to think of a way to put up a glossary!
In answer to your questions, I am not sure if the stem cells would be necessarily taken from younger patients but I am wondering if youth and state of health may reflect on the potency of the stem cells if results from this study were to be positive. (Its possible that heart patients participating may be >70 yrs and possibly a history of medication.)
It seems that the stem cells in this study will not be administered at the site of damage- if the results are positive, then it will demonstrate that the stem cells are able to migrate to the damaged area. The significance of this will be tremendous because patients could avoid surgery or any invasive procedures for stem cell therapy. The researchers may consider stem cell dose to be of importance- they are giving a pretty high dose of stem cells, similar to cancer patient treatment.
Finally, patients receive stem cells from StemLife in various ways depending on the condition and established routes of administration to obtain optimal results. For cancer or blood disorder transplant patients, the usual route of administration is intravenous (into the vein).
StemLife collaborates with senior consultants and medical specialists to assess each patient's condition, treatment modality and preference.
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