Stem Cells and Cerebral Palsy Question

Stem Cells and Cerebral Palsy Question

Reader Question: Do you know if any research has been done to improve the conditions of CP patients using stem cells?

Well, there has been some. According to a press release published in August of 2004 on Science Daily and in EurekAlert, researchers at the Medical College of Georgia are doing research on laboratory animals in this area. The researchers have been transplanting stem cells into the brain along with naturally produced chemicals that encourage the migration of stem cells to the injured areas. When the stem cells were transplanted without the chemicals, not enough of them made it to the injured area to effect healing. At the time of the press release, the lead researcher, Dr. James E. Carroll, who also works with cerebral palsy patients, said that the research had a long way to go and did not anticipate clinical trials in people soon.

In 2005, Dr. Carroll’s research had reached the point where he showed that “Adult stem cell therapy quickly and significantly improves recovery of motor function in an animal model for the ischemic brain injury that occurs in about 10 percent of babies with cerebral palsy,” according to a story on Medical News Today in October. (It was also published on other on-line sites.) This study on used adult stem cells derived from rat bone marrow. The article goes on to say,

Next steps include looking at longer-term recovery and at whether surviving stem cells actually function as brain cells, networking with other cells by forming points of communication called synapses. Perhaps most importantly, they also will look at whether stem cells produce similar results when they are given intravenously rather than injected directly into the injury site, Dr. Carroll says.

Clinical trials are still in the future, and this therapy would need to be administered soon after birth/injury.

An abstract of an article by Dr. Carroll that was published in July of 2003, says, “While the use of stem cell therapy is promising, there are no controlled trials in humans with cerebral palsy and only a few trials in patients with other neurological disorders. However, studies in animals with experimentally induced strokes or traumatic injuries have indicated that benefit is possible.” The abstract is on the National Library of Medicine/NIH’s http://www.pubmed.gov/ site. The same site had an abstract for an article (in German!) in using umbilical cord blood stem cells to treat perinatal brain damage.

The Steenblock Institute in California has done at least one small study in 2004 treating children with cerebral palsy with umbilical cord stem cells. The article had not yet been peer-reviewed when the news was released, and although it had been submitted to “Cell Transplantation,” I have not been able to find anything related in the table of contents for the 2004 or 2005 issues of that journal.

Aside from Dr. Carroll’s work, I did not find much else going on. Maybe someone else knows something? Since CP can be caused by so many things, it seems unlikely that any one stem cell method could cure all forms of it.