Will Parkies who get this procedure then be called PORKIES? (Please
forgive me, I could not resist that!)




[OO] LOOKING FOR RADIOS!
Ken Becker
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On Thu, 27 Feb 1997, bob garrick wrote:

> Pig Transplants May Help Parkinson's Patients
> 04:57 p.m. Feb 27, 1997 EST
>
> WASHINGTON (Reuter) - Fetal pig cells have been successfully
> transplanted into the brains of Parkinson's patients, a turning point in
> cross-species transplantation and a possible advance toward treating the
> common neurological disorder, scientists said Thursday.
>
> Other scientists have experimented with transplanting human brain cells
> from aborted fetuses but the supply of such tissue is limited and
> fraught with ethical complications. So researchers turned to pigs,
> getting federal approval to do a cross-species transplant, which is rare
> and controversial because of fears of transferring an animal disease
> into the human population.
>
> Parkinson's afflicts roughly one million Americans and millions more
> throughout the globe. For reasons not yet understood, they do not have
> enough of the chemical dopamine in their brains and gradually develop
> tremors and other motor problems. Drugs can slow the progression but
> there is no cure.
>
> Twelve patients have had the pig cell transplant and early indications
> are that the procedure is safe and the patients seem to benefit,
> although it is too soon to know if the treatment will work indefinitely,
> the researchers said.
>
> ``We have measured their activities, their daily living, their
> complications,'' said Dr. James Shoemacher. ``We have seen measurable
> improvements. And none has deteriorated.''
>
> One of the 12 died of unrelated causes, giving scientists a chance to
> study his brain in an autopsy. Shoemacher and his colleagues report
> Friday in the journal Nature Medicine that the autopsy showed the
> transplanted cells survived in the human brain and were producing
> dopamine up to the patient's death.
>
> ``We found very clear evidence for surviving dopamine cells that had
> grown and reconnected themselves with the patient's brain,'' Harvard
> neuroscientist Ole Isacson said in a telephone interview.
>
> Although scientists have to be cautious in drawing conclusions based on
> only one patient, the team said the results so far were encouraging.
>
> ``This is really the extension of a long scientific work in my
> laboratory and others that show you can replace brain cells that have
> died, and you can also do it between species,'' Isacson said.
>
> ``That creates a reasonable hope that in the future we can create
> therapies that deal with the structure of the brain, and the brain can
> accept new cells,'' he added.
>
> Although scientists worry about possibly introducing animal diseases
> into humans via cross-species transplants, Isacson is confident the risk
> is miniscule when using healthy pig nerve cells that have been
> extensively screened.
>
> Another report in the same journal by Robin Weiss of the Institute of
> Cancer Research in London says pig retroviruses can infect human cells
> in laboratory cultures and replicate themselves. Those were cancer
> cells, which are diseased, while Isacson's experiment used healthy
> cells.
>
>
>
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>