Too Many Adult Stem Cells Successes to Keep Up

So many of these adult stem cell success stories come to me now, that I am unable to post them all here at SHS. Two recent examples: A new adult stem cell therapy is successfully restoring vision to people with chemical injuries and a genetic defect that causes impaired vision. From the story:

Using stem cells from tissue donors, surgeons grew the cells in the laboratory before transplanting them onto the patients’ eyes.

Dr Julie Daniels, who is leading the research team, will present the results at a conference on regenerative medicine being held in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, today. She said: “Before the surgery the patients were barely able to recognise when someone was waving a hand in front of their face but we have restored their vision to the point they can read three to four lines down the eye chart.”

Nineteen patients have now received the treatment, known as limbal stem cell therapy, at Moorfields Eye Hospital.

Meanwhile, scientists have discovered a molecule that may one day lead to important regenerative techniques with a patient’s own nerve stem cells. From the story:

Inspired by a chance discovery during another experiment, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have created a small molecule that stimulates nerve stem cells to begin maturing into nerve cells in culture.

This finding might someday allow a person’s own nerve stem cells to be grown outside the body, stimulated into maturity, and then re-implanted as working nerve cells to treat various diseases, the researchers said. “This provides a critical starting point for neuro-regenerative medicine and brain cancer chemotherapy,” said Dr. Jenny Hsieh, assistant professor of molecular biology and senior author of the paper, which appears online today and in the June 17 issue of Nature Chemical Biology

This is the opposite of no news being good news. With adult stem cell research, too much news to fit manageably within a blog format is very good news, indeed.