Interview About Stem Cell Clinical Trial for Vascular Disease

The Saturday Evening Post has published an interview with Michael Murphy, a physician and researcher at the Indiana Center for Vascular Biology and Medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine on his work using bone-marrow stem cells to treat peripheral vascular disease. The disease results in the constriction of blood vessels to the point where limbs do not receive enough oxygen and sometimes need to be amputated.

In the interview, Murphy describes the process of obtaining cells from bone marrow and reinjecting them into the patient. He reports that in Japan over 100 patients have been treated with very good results. Some of the patients had diabetes.

Murphy also described current bone marrow transplants, future research to be done on whether there are fewer working progenitor cells in the bone marrow of patients with vascular disease, and other studies to find additional sources of stem cells.