Re: Tristem claims stem cell can be "un-differentiated" from mature cells

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Baby Peanut) wrote:
>http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2003/11/29/4520/0469
>
>By rickyjames, Section News
>Posted on Sat Nov 29th, 2003 at 04:52:00 AM PST        
>It sounds too good to be true, and most scientists think that it is.
>But the greatest thing about science is that if you and others can
>reproduce the most outlandish of claims in a lab, acceptance of your
>ideas and discoveries will (probably, slowly) occur. That appears to
>be the process that British company TriStem is undergoing with
>upcoming publication in January of its latest research in the
>peer-reviewed Current Medical Research and Opinion (vol 20, p 87).
>This paper marks the first time TriStem's work has been cleared by
>unbiased scientist-referees for publication in a respected, mainstream
>medical journal.
>
>Tristem is claiming it has developed a process to convert
>easily-isolated white blood cells into stem cells which it can further
>culture to replace any defective tissue in the body. Current
>scientific dogma holds that once a stem cell has differentiated into
>mature body tissue like a blood cell, the transformation cannot be
>reversed. TriStem says it can. If true, not only has TriStem bypassed
>the current need to obtain stem cells from human embryos for research;
>it has revolutionized the very foundation of medicine. To say that
>other scientists have been sceptical of TriStem's claims is an
>understatement. "I would be extremely sceptical of these findings and
>would need more proof," says stem cell expert Evan Snyder of the
>Burnham Institute in La Jolla, California.
>
>And yet, TriStem has apparently taken white blood cells of lab mice,
>converted them back into stem cells, further treated the stem cells to
>make them into blood-producing bone marrow cells, and injected the new
>bone marrow cells into the bones of the mice, where the cells took up
>the duty of making blood. All of this research effort was performed
>under the watchful eye of a third-party U.S. research laboratory team,
>which acted as a critic - and came away convinced thay had seen the
>future of medicine. "I was extremely sceptical," says team member Tim
>McCaffrey, a cardiovascular researcher at George Washington
>University. "They did it in front of my eyes with my own blood. It's
>stunning. What's radical is the speed and ease with which it works."
>
>This technique alone, if confirmed, could revolutionize bone marrow
>transplants and leukemia therapy. Yet TriStem claims this is only the
>beginning of what it can do...
>
> 
>
>In currently unpublished research, TriStem founder Ilham Abuljadayel
>says that by adapting standard culturing methods, she has managed to
>turn white blood cells into heart, nerve, bone, cartilage, smooth
>muscle, liver and pancreatic cells. If true, this is a stunning
>achievement that could lead to diverse treatments ranging from a cure
>to diabetes to liver regeneration to heart attack recovery to healing
>spinal cord injury.
>
>The key to TriStem's "transgeneration" technique is a special antibody
>manufactured by DakoCytomation of Denmark that is normally used to
>detect abnormal brain cells. A decade ago Abuljadayel tested this
>antibody as a possible treatment for leukemia. Instead of killing
>leukemia-diseased white blood cells, the drug caused them to flourish
>- and undergo spectacular alterations Abuljadayel dubbed
>"retrodifferentiation" and promptly patented. She's been developing
>the technique ever since. McCaffrey encourages sceptics to try the
>procedure themselves before condemning it. "I don't think there's
>voodoo involved, but until a number of people do it, other scientists
>have every right to be cautious," he says.
>
>Growing trust in TriStem's claims is quickening the pace of its
>progress. Earlier this month the company received approval from an
>unnamed government to begin human trials of the
>blood-to-implanted-bone-marrow process. Because of the hoopla
>surrounding the effort, this trial is being held in secret in the
>unidentified host country. A dozen patients with aplastic anemia
>(severe bone marrow deficiencies) are to be treated in the trial.
>"Within a week [of implantation], we should find if the [Tristem]
>cells have taken," Abuljadayel says. Improvements in the patients'
>condition should be immediately noticeable, and results are
>anticipated to be announced in March. Stay tuned.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------
>
>http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994418
>
>Blood could generate body repair kit
> 
>19:00 26 November 03
> 
>A small company in London, UK, claims to have developed a technique
>that overturns scientific dogma and could revolutionise medicine. It
>says it can turn ordinary blood into cells capable of regenerating
>damaged or diseased tissues. This could transform the treatment of
>everything from heart disease to Parkinson's.
>
>If the company, TriStem, really can do what it says, there would be no
>need to bother with conventional stem cells, currently one of the
>hottest fields of research. But its astounding claims have been met
>with bemusement and disbelief by mainstream researchers.
>
>TriStem has been claiming for years that it can take a half a litre of
>anyone's blood, extract the white blood cells and make them revert to
>a "stem-cell-like" state within hours. The cells can be turned into
>beating heart cells for mending hearts, nerve cells for restoring
>brains and so on.
>
>The company has now finally provided proof that at least some of its
>claims might be true. In collaboration with independent researchers in
>the US, the company has used its technique to turn white blood cells
>into the blood-generating stem cells found in bone marrow.
>
>When injected into mice, these cells migrated to the bone marrow and
>generated nearly all the different types of human blood cells, the
>team will report in the January edition of Current Medical Research
>and Opinion (vol 20, p 87), a peer-reviewed journal.
>
>
>Proof required
>
>"I would be extremely sceptical of these findings and would need more
>proof," says stem cell expert Evan Snyder of the Burnham Institute in
>La Jolla, California, whose response is typical of many scientists New
>Scientist contacted.
>
>"I was extremely sceptical," says team member Tim McCaffrey, a
>cardiovascular researcher at George Washington University in
>Washington DC, who was asked to evaluate TriStem's claims. "They did
>it in front of my eyes with my own blood," he says. "It's stunning."
>
>Even if replacing bone marrow is all TriStem's method can achieve, it
>is still significant. Tens of thousands of people need bone marrow
>transplants each year. In some cases, doctors already extract stem
>cells from the blood instead of transplanting bone marrow itself. A
>donor is given growth factors that make their marrow stem cells
>proliferate and spill over into the blood, but the procedure takes
>several days.
>
>TriStem's method might make it possible to obtain vast numbers of
>blood stem cells in a fraction of the time. "What's radical is the
>speed and ease with which it works," McCaffrey says.
>
>
>Much, much more
>
>But the company claims it can do much, much more. Ilham Abuljadayel,
>the founder of TriStem, says that by adapting standard culturing
>methods she has managed to turn white blood cells into heart, nerve,
>bone, cartilage, smooth muscle, liver and pancreatic cells.
>
>TriStem has not yet published results proving all these claims. Since
>the company has worked only with human cells, it cannot perform what
>is regarded as the "gold standard" test of stem cells' versatility:
>inserting them into an embryo to show they can form all the different
>tissues. But if TriStem's method really can produce a wide range of
>cells, its potential is huge.
>
>For starters, it would avoid the ethical issues associated with
>embryonic stem cells, the most versatile kind of stem cell. TriStem's
>method would also make it easy to treat individuals with their own
>cells, avoiding any problems with immune rejection. The only way to
>obtain ESCs that match a patient's own tissues would be therapeutic
>cloning, yet to be achieved with human cells.
>
>The adult stem cells found in various tissues in the body could also
>solve both these problems. But there is still much debate about their
>versatility, and even if some are capable of forming just about any
>cell type, they are scarce. Extracting and multiplying them is
>difficult and time-consuming.
>
>In addition, TriStem's claims challenge the scientific dogma that
>specialised cells cannot revert back to an unspecialised state or be
>converted from one type to another. Other groups also claim that they
>can "transdifferentiate" cells (New Scientist print edition, 12
>October 2002). But none can do so as swiftly and easily as TriStem.
>
>
>Killer antibody
>
>Its "miracle" hinges on an antibody manufactured by DakoCytomation of
>Denmark that is normally used to detect abnormal brain cells. In the
>early 1990s, while working as a consultant immunologist, Abuljadayel
>tried to use the antibody to kill leukaemia cells. Instead of dying,
>the cells altered form and flourished.
>
>Abuljadayel says the antibody binds to a receptor on the cell surface.
>But how the antibody triggers "retrodifferentiation", if indeed it
>does, remains to be established. To avoid arguments about whether the
>cells produced are genuine stem cells, she calls them "stem-cell-like
>cells".
>
>Abuljadayel applied for a patent on retrodifferentiation in 1994, and
>in 1999 founded TriStem with the help of her husband, Ghazi Dhoot,
>then an investment banker. The company has long struggled to convince
>mainstream scientists that its system works.
>
>Like TriStem, McCaffrey encourages sceptics to try the procedure
>themselves before condemning it. "I don't think there's voodoo
>involved, but until a number of people do it, other scientists have
>every right to be cautious," he says.
>
>For many researchers, alarm bells ring loudest over the failure of
>TriStem to get such groundbreaking results published in a leading
>journal. They also ask why Abuljadayel has had no permanent academic
>position.
>
>
>Gross mortality
>
>Then there is the question of whether TriStem really has achieved
>retrodifferentiation. Alexander Medvinsky at the Institute of Stem
>Cell Research in Edinburgh thinks the antibody might simply kill
>ordinary white blood cells, leaving stem cells behind.
>
>But McCaffrey rejects this, saying that tests show the white blood
>cells remain alive. "There is no gross mortality, and the numbers
>surviving are of the order of 90 to 95 per cent."
>
>Not all researchers are as sceptical. "The results reported here are
>impressive," says Bob Lanza, chief scientific officer of Advanced Cell
>Technology of Massachusetts. "If successfully repeated, this process
>could have broad clinical potential."
>
>TriStem is sufficiently confident that its method works to start human
>trials. Earlier in November it received permission to carry out a
>clinical trial of its technology for creating stem cells from blood.
>Senior government research collaborators in the country hosting the
>trial have asked for the location to be kept secret for now.
>
>The method will be used to treat a dozen patients with aplastic
>anaemia, a condition in which people have a severe lack of bone
>marrow. Abuljadayel plans to treat the patients with blood stem cells
>derived from tissue-matched donors. "Within a week, we should find if
>the cells have taken," she says, adding that any improvements in the
>patients' condition should be immediately noticeable.
>
>The results should be in by the end of March. Watch this space.
> 
>concatenated
>Andy Coghlan



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