Heart Study to Begin in Minnesota

Heart Study to Begin in Minnesota

A press release reports that researchers at the Minneapolis Heart Institute, in conjunction with the University of Minnesota, are beginning a clinical trial to examine the safety and efficacy of applying stem cells to patients who have suffered an acute myocardial infarction (heart attack). There will be 60 patients total treated, 45 of whom will receive injections of their own stem cells and 15 of whom will receive placebos. The stem cell harvesting will occur three to seven days after the patient is admitted to the hospital with the heart attack and the cells will be re-injected the same days. All patients will also receive the current standard treatment for heart attacks, including stenting at the time of admission and drugs afterwards. The patients will be monitored for two years to see if the infusion of stem cells reduced the degree of heart scarring, thus leading to better cardiac functioning and a reduction in the incidence of congestive heart failure. The patients who received the placebo will be given stem cell injections six months later, to see if delayed administration of stem cells has any effect. (I wonder if the other 45 will receive a placebo injection at the same time so that it is still unknown who got what during the two years of monitoring.)

This is obviously a small study whose results will not be available for some time, but it’s good to see a heart study going forward in the US.

New Jersey Redux

New Jersey Redux

A New Jersey stem cell bond to fund research (as opposed to the legislation to build research centers, which has passed the Senate but is stuck in the Assembly) may not be on the ballot this year. Senate President Richard Codey said that budgetary concerns may make it too hard to sell to taxpayers. The legislature has to pass the bond measure by August for it to go on the November ballot. The Newark Star-Ledger reports that advocates of stem cell research are disappointed and hope that the measure moves forward.

Stem Cell Battles in Wisconsin

Stem Cell Battles in Wisconsin

Wisconsin is perhaps the state with the most vested economic interest in embryonic stem cell research, as the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation holds the patents to many embryonic stem cell technologies. Besides the extensive research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the state is also home to the NIH funded stem cell bank, which consolidates the stem cell lines eligible for federal funding. No big surprise then that Governor Jim Doyle, a Democrat, has refused to yield to pressure from Catholic bishops about embryonic stem cell research.

The Wisconsin Capital Times reports that Archbishop Timothy Dolan of the Milwaukee Archdiocese and Bishop Robert Morlino of the Madison Diocese sent a letter to Doyle on Monday, asking him to rethink his position. (The story has been widely reported in other sources too.) The letter was released to the public yesterday. Doyle has responded with a letter of his own in which he said that he must “respectfully disagree.” Doyle is a Catholic himself, according to the article. He is running for re-election this fall.

One of the more interesting points of the article for me was the following excerpt from the bishops’ letter regarding the relationship between politics and science:

"If you mean politics in the sense of a narrow calculation of partisan advantage; we heartily agree," they wrote.
"But if by politics you mean the activity by which all in the community engage in a civic conversation about the means and ends of any enterprise done in the community's name with the community's money, then we must heartily disagree."

I completely agree with the bishops here; civic conversations need to be had about science. What gets mucky, however, is when you start talking about things that are not able to be defined by science, or for which the scientific evidence differs from people’s strongly held beliefs. How do you decide what gets to count as science, or what matters? This is not to say there should be no such conversations, just that they may not immediately lead to any policy that satisfies all participants.

Stem Cells from Hair Follicles—Another Development

Stem Cells from Hair Follicles—Another Development

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia have published results of a study isolating multipotent stem cells from hair follicles. There is no press release on the Penn website, and the article itself is available by subscription only, so all I have to draw on for this news is the abstract. The researchers used embryonic stem cell culture medium to isolate stem cells from the follicle; the cells expressed neuron stem cell markers and could differentiate into multiple lineages. They also expressed the transcription factors Nanog and Oct4, which are expressed in embryonic stem cells. (Transcription factors are proteins which control the expression of other genes.)

If I am reading the abstract correctly, there are two (at least) interesting components to this research. The first is the isolation of a multipotent population of stem cells; the second is the use of embryonic stem cell medium to work with adult cells.