Just about one year ago Pres. Bush announced stem cell research would be
funded by the NIH - but only a limited number of stem cell lines that
were already created before Aug. 9th could be used in the research
AS theses quotes from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article below states
- now one year later:
-- "the research is still in an embryonic stage"
-- " Far fewer viable stem cell collections are available than the
president and his aides had claimed, and
relatively few scientists are ready and able to work with them."
-- " Government money has trickled, not flowed."
-- Due to the restrictions on the research and "cumbersome bureaucratic
procedures... many researchers are afraid or unwilling to invest the time
and expense of designing experiments and writing a grant proposal for
such iffy funding"
--" So far, the National Institutes of Health has awarded five
administrative grants and approved only a few direct research grants."
The government's pace in funding the research was called "dismal."
--The potential of stem cells for PD treatments, according to James
Thomson of the Un. of Wisconsin -- "Embryonic stem cells in lab
experiments have been shown to form neurons that produce dopamine, and
"we're fairly optimistic" the results will hold up in people, Thomson
said. This could be one of the fastest treatments developed from stem
cells, he predicted."
FROM: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
August 4, 2002 Sunday FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 01A
HEADLINE: No miracles yet ;
No miracles yet, but stem cell research proceeds steadily
BYLINE: MARILYNN MARCHIONE of the Journal Sentinel staff
Aug. 9, 2001, isn't a date burned into the American psyche like Sept.
11.
But scientists around the world know it as the day President Bush made
a
landmark announcement, allowing limited federal funding for a promising
but
controversial new field called human embryonic stem cell research.
One year later, that research is still in an embryonic stage.
No cures or human experiments are under way. Far fewer viable stem
cell
collections are available than the president and his aides had claimed,
and
relatively few scientists are ready and able to work with them.
Government money has trickled, not flowed. Foreign labs are making key
achievements, and stem cell opponents portray each new advance in
traditional
medicine as proof that research involving embryos is unnecessary.
The field's leading scientist -- the University of Wisconsin's James
Thomson
-- says the pace of progress is ordinary for such an extraordinarily
novel
science. But he worries about unrealistic expectations of fast cures.
"That's been over-hyped so much that there's going to be a tremendous
backlash to this about three years from now, when there will not be a
lot of
clinical trials out there because this takes time," he said in an
interview and
in a recent speech in Madison.
Cells' potential hailed
Thomson turned the scientific world upside down in 1998 when he became
the
first to isolate and grow human embryonic stem cells, primitive cells
that
differentiate or specialize and form all the tissues of the body. He
used
leftover embryos donated by couples who had gone through infertility
treatment
to get the cells, which now are maintained in cell lines, or
collections, that
live and reproduce indefinitely.
Scientists say such cells are an unprecedented tool for studying human
health
and disease and unraveling mysteries of infertility, birth defects and
other
aspects of early human development.
They also hold potential for a rapidly growing area of medicine --
cell-based
therapy -- to treat some of the most common and currently incurable
disorders,
such as Parkinson's disease, diabetes and spinal cord injuries.
But turning discovery into cures is a long process. The next step is
translational research -- learning what the cells can and can't do,
directing
them to form various tissues and testing them in animals. Only after
that's been
done can products be commercialized and treatments be tried in people.
That laboratory spadework is going on now, and those involved don't
consider
it slow.
"That's the normal evolution of science. I think it's to be expected
for a
novel field," said Jeffrey Rothstein, a neurologist and stem cell
researcher at
Johns Hopkins University.
"This has gone really well and fast over the last year. Everybody
expects
instant miracles, but what we have is a lot of great work going on,"
said Andrew
Cohn, spokesman for the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which
holds
patents on the stem cells Thomson developed.
It would go quicker if government grants were being fast-tracked
instead of
mired in cumbersome bureaucratic procedures and if Bush hadn't
restricted the
cells that could be used to only those from embryos destroyed by last
Aug. 9,
some scientists say. That not only cramps scientific creativity but also
creates
a climate where many researchers are afraid or unwilling to invest the
time and
expense of designing experiments and writing a grant proposal for such
iffy
funding.
Few grants awarded
So far, the National Institutes of Health has awarded five
administrative
grants and approved only a few direct research grants. UW's Jon Odorico,
for
instance, said he's been told that he is getting a $250,000 pilot grant
for work
on diabetes, and Thomson has been awarded a $2.2 million grant for
embryonic
stem cell work in primates that includes a human research component.
"This is a beginning. There is more coming," said Belinda Seto, an NIH
funding official.
Multiple calls seeking information and comment from U.S. Health and
Human
Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson were not returned.
The little money awarded so far is "a big disappointment," and the
restriction to only existing stem cell lines "is really not the right
decision,"
said Rudolf Jaenisch, a prominent researcher at the Whitehead Institute
for
Biomedical Research and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Advances by foreign labs and some American ones in the last year show
"we can
use these cells for therapy, that's clear. There's all the reason to
believe
this has real medical potential," Jaenisch said.
Susan Garfinkel, a geneticist at the Stem Cell Research Foundation, a
group
that funnels private donations to stem cell scientists, said the
government's
pace was dismal.
"It's really very sad that you have the potential to have cures for
diseases,
and the United States is just not moving forward fast enough to make the
decisions to use that potential," she said.
Opponents still fighting
Meanwhile, stem cell opponents -- mostly abortion foes -- have moved
their
fight to the state level and are courting public opinion by talking up
achievements with adult stem cells, which form specific tissues in the
body and
may have the ability to morph into other types as well.
Richard Doerflinger, a spokesman for the National Conference of
Catholic
Bishops, said embryonic stem cell research had been eclipsed in the last
year.
"Science has marched on. The main advances coming out of stem cell
research,
especially those involving clinical benefit, have been out of adult stem
cells,"
he said.
But Thomson, Jaenisch, Rothstein and other scientists say the
respective
potential and limitations of the cell types are unknown. Virtually every
major
medical, scientific and academic institution has urged that both fields
move
forward.
"There is no compelling evidence that a pluripotent cell, equivalent
to an
embryonic stem cell, exists in the adult body. Period," Thomson said.
The notion that one cell type is better than another or that
scientists are
competing on this point "is an argument which is political, it's in the
press,
but it's not really a scientific argument," he said.
"That's absolutely correct," Jaenisch agreed. "I think it's really
very
ill-conceived to say that because there's potential with adult stem
cells we
should do away with embryonic stem cells."
Thomson also thinks the press has over-emphasized embryonic stem
cells'
potential for cures rather than what they'll do for biology.
"As a basic tool for understanding the body, these cells are
unparalleled,"
and that contribution "will outlast the criticism" if they don't produce
cures
quickly, he said.
"When you think about how embryonic stem cells are going to impact
medicine,
this is the reason. Because if you think about transplanting cells for
Parkinson's disease or whatever, that's a really crude thing to do. It
would be
much better to understand at a basic level how that disease occurs in
the first
place and prevent it or slow it down," Thomson said.
"However, in the short term, for people that have these diseases
today, it
really could be the difference between life and death."
Cures won't develop quickly
Work on cures is progressing. Scientists are trying to control cell
differentiation, find better and safer ways to grow stem cells, and keep
the
immune system from rejecting new cells or tissues.
"I'd be very optimistic that within the next decade or so, we could
probably
make essentially all the therapeutically useful cells in the body from
embryonic
stem cells. I think the field will go that quickly," Thomson said. "But
I also
would guess that in the next decade there'd be relatively few successful
clinical trials based on these cells. People expect things to happen
faster than
they're going to."
Here's where things stand on specific diseases:
Diabetes. Transplanting insulin-producing islet cells from donated
pancreases
has been shown to work, "however, the source of cells is grossly
inadequate" --
about 300 transplants are possible for the 1 million people who have
diabetes,
Thomson said.
Making such cells from stem cells "is going to take a lot of work, but
it's
one of the transplantation therapies likely to work," based on research
Odorico
already has done, Thomson said.
"We're making small strides, but it's a long way off" from therapies
yet,
Odorico said.
Parkinson's disease. Transplants from fetal tissue of nerves that
produce
dopamine, the brain substance lost in Parkinson's, "occasionally work,
but
overall the success rates have not been very good," and the supply of
such
tissue is "grossly inadequate" to meet the need, Thomson said.
Embryonic stem cells in lab experiments have been shown to form
neurons that
produce dopamine, and "we're fairly optimistic" the results will hold up
in
people, Thomson said. This could be one of the fastest treatments
developed from
stem cells, he predicted.
Heart disease. Hearts don't have effective or sufficient adult stem
cells to
repair themselves and grow new cells to replace those killed when a
heart attack
occurs. Embryonic stem cells have yielded cardiac cells in lab
experiments. The
challenge will be getting them to function in a heart attack patient and
also
repairing or replacing the loss of blood to that region of the heart,
Thomson
said.
"The safety issues, reproducibility, the dosage issues, take time,"
Rothstein
said. "My patients clearly expect therapies sooner than they will be
available.
"We think there's fantastic potential in these cells," he said, "and
potential can run on a long timeline."
LOAD-DATE: August 4, 2002
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