As of late there have been many developments in the stem cell storage industry. Both in the public and private sector’s. It has had alot of coverage in the press recently with article in the “Sunday Times” and coverage of Richard Branson entering into the the realms of stem cell storage.

So the point i am getting at is…. Is all publicity good publicity? with the likes of:

Virgin Health Bank

Smartcells

Cells4life

Future Health

All investing heavily on research into stem cell storage! With any number of possibilities to the use of these small cells, who knows what the future holds? But one thing is for certain, stem cell storage is a big issue and should be followed closely!

So What Is The Importance Of Stem Cell Storage? I will leave you to decide!

Umbilical cord blood is extremely rich in stem cells, these cells can be used, in a similar way to bone marrow, to treat illnesses like leukemia in children. In the future, it could also be used to repair damaged tissues in various different diseases such as heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure and diabetes. Thanks to the miracle of stem cell storage.

Cord blood banks usually fall into two groups. Public banks collect cord blood which would have been donated at birth, this is stored through a process called stem cell storage, and that blood is then available to everyone. The value of public banks is now extremely well established, but at the moment, only a few UK hospitals collect umbilical cord blood for the public bank. But at the moment coverage is insufficient to meet demand.

On the other hand, commercial blood banks allow parents the chance to store their own child’s cord blood, for biological insurance, through the process of stem cell storage. This is in case the stem cells were needed to treat the child if they fell ill, or they could also be used to treat a close family member. Customers usually pay around the sum of £1500 for a 20-25 year service, but it is believed that the chances of the blood acyually being used are very slim. Therefore private blood banks have been opposed by several medical bodies.

Virgin Health Bank have recently introduced the idea of dual public-private banking. Virgin Health Bank stores 80% of the sample for public use and 20% for private use and also puts some of the proceeds towards stem cell research.

Virgin Health Bank has reviewed the difficulties between the parents desire to store their own child’s cord blood and the unmet need for public banks. Although, Virgin’s service still contains many of the major problems of private banking.

To push forward, Virgin Health Bank will need to gain the trust and support of obstetricians and midwives who actually collect the blood and advise potential patients. The overall collection process must be improved to reduce the burden on staff.

It was recently reported in The Times that, consent provisions that would usually ban stem-cell research on childhood genetic disease are being completely dropped from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

The Government have come to an agreement whereby they will review the legislation. This came about after scientists said it would block investigations of conditions that can kill children in the early stages of life. As it stands, the legislation makes it illegal to make and use cloned stem-cell models with tissue taken from ill children.

Consent would certainly be needed before a patient’s cells could be used for the research and experiments, and the Bill currently doesn’t allow children’s parents to give the consent required, on their behalf. Medical research experts explained that this would ultimately ban all cloning research into diseases such as spinal muscular atrophy, which generally kill children before they are considered old enough to give consent.

The Government are now preparing to table their own amendment in the Commons to change this. This will give parents of critically ill children, and carers of mentally incapacitated adults, the power to consent on their behalf.

What Do The Cynics Make Of This?

A team of Canadian stem cell researchers and scientists have successfully transformed human embryonic stem cells into three types of heart cells. This breakthrough marks a huge step, in the right direction, towards the test-tube creation of real functioning human heart tissue. In the future this could lead to new strategies for repairing damaged hearts for heart attack victims.

So in your opinion does this bode well for the future? Or are there still a lot of sceptical people around?

California’s stem cell institute yesterday unveiled its plans to spend $3 billion in a 149-page document, that sets what experts and patient advocates described as conservative and attainable goals.

Not a single stem cell therapy is going to be approved for market within the next 10 years of state-funded stem cell research under the proposal. But the plan will allocate funding for jump-starting embryonic stem cell research and the creation of a US embryo bank.

More than $1.6 billion would be invested into research, with the rest going toward facilities, infrastructure, training and public outreach.

Dallas Hextell looked like a normal healthy toddler when he appeared on the “Today” show on March 11 – doing all the things you would associate with a young toddler.

But just nine months earlier, cerebral palsy had kept Dallas from reaching typical milestones of child development.

Dallas’ parents believe his rapid improvement to be down to stem cells that were stored, from his umbilical chord blood, when he was born. These cells where then infused into his body.

But experts warn that no one knows yet just how well the treatment has worked or whether it will work for others with his condition.

”About one of 278 children in the United States has cerebral palsy, a motor disability caused by brain damage.”

The biggest risk factors for the condition are prematurity, an infection of the amniotic fluid and oxygen deprivation during gestation or birth.

Cord blood has been used with great success as an alternative to bone marrow transplantation to treat cancer and blood disorders. It can also be used to treat a class of rare but fatal inherited metabolic disorders called lysosomal storage diseases.

Dallas was treated as part of a clinical trial at Duke University and is one of 12 children with cerebral palsy who has undergone the procedure so far. The trial will ultimately study 40 children, tracking each child’s progress for two years.

During the treatment, the cord blood taken from his umbilical cord shortly after his birth was then injected into his blood. The therapy is in this sense different from cord-blood-based therapies for cancers and genetic conditions, which use cord blood, obtained from a donor — either a child whose cord blood was donated to a public bank or a relative.

Foreign blood is required for those conditions to avoid infusing patients with cells that may have the same defect that is causing disease. But to prevent the patient’s immune system from rejecting the cells in the foreign blood, the procedure also requires chemotherapy to destroy the patient’s immune system.

To track progress, each child is evaluated by testing both their motor and cognitive skills over time. The results are then compared with the abilities doctors would have expected them to have based on their condition before the treatment.

But several people have come out and said that this doesn’t appear to be a long term

Ongoing studies into human embryonic stem cells have raised to light information about the complex events that occur during human development. A key area of this work is to identify how undifferentiated stem cells become differentiated. Scientists know that turning genes on and off is key to this process. Some of the most serious medical conditions, such as cancer and birth defects, are due to abnormal cell division and differentiation. A better understanding of the genetic and molecular controls of these processes may yield information about how such diseases arise and suggest new strategies for therapy. A significant problem to this use and most uses of stem cells is that scientists do not yet fully understand the signals that turn specific genes on and off to influence the differentiation of the stem cell.

Human stem cells could also be used to test new drugs. For example, new medications could be tested for safety on differentiated cells generated from human pluripotent cell lines. Other kinds of cell lines are already used in this way. Cancer cell lines, for example, are used to screen potential anti-tumor drugs. But, the availability of pluripotent stem cells would allow drug testing in a wider range of cell types. However, to screen drugs effectively, the conditions must be identical when comparing different drugs. Therefore, scientists will have to be able to precisely control the differentiation of stem cells into the specific cell type on which drugs will be tested. Current knowledge of the signals controlling differentiation fall well short of being able to mimic these conditions precisely to consistently have identical differentiated cells for each drug being tested.

Possibly the most important potential application of human stem cells is the generation of cells and tissues that could be used for cell based therapies. Today, donated organs and tissues are often used to replace ailing or destroyed tissue, but the need for transplantable tissues and organs far outweighs the available supply. Stem cells, directed to differentiate into specific cell types, offer the possibility of a renewable source of replacement cells and tissues to treat diseases including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, spinal cord injury, stroke, burns, heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis, and rheumatoid arthritis.

For example, it may become possible to generate healthy heart muscle cells in the laboratory and then transplant those cells into patients with chronic heart disease. Preliminary research in mice and other animals indicates that bone marrow stem cells, transplanted into a damaged heart, can generate heart muscle cells and successfully repopulate the heart tissue. Other recent studies in cell culture systems indicate that it may be possible to direct the differentiation of embryonic stem cells or adult bone marrow cells into heart muscle cells.

In people who suffer from type I diabetes, the cells of the pancreas that normally produce insulin are destroyed by the patient’s own immune system. New studies indicate that it may be possible to direct the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells in cell culture to form insulin-producing cells that eventually could be used in transplantation therapy for diabetics.

To realize the promise of novel cell-based therapies for such pervasive and debilitating diseases, scientists must be able to easily and reproducibly manipulate stem cells so that they possess the necessary characteristics for successful differentiation, transplantation and engraftment. The following is a list of steps in successful cell-based treatments that scientists will have to learn to precisely control to bring such treatments to the clinic. To be useful for transplant purposes, stem cells must be reproducibly made to:

• Proliferate extensively and generate sufficient quantities of tissue.
• Differentiate into the desired cell type(s).
• Survive in the recipient after transplant.
• Integrate into the surrounding tissue after transplant.
• Function appropriately for the duration of the recipient’s life.
• Avoid harming the recipient in any way.

Also, to avoid the problem of immune rejection, scientists are experimenting with different research strategies to generate tissues that will not be rejected.

To summarize, the promise of stem cell therapies is an exciting one, but significant technical hurdles remain that will only be overcome through years of intensive research.