
Stem cells shown safe, beneficial for chronic stroke patients - kensai
http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2016/06/stem-cells-shown-safe-beneficial-for-chronic-stroke-patients.html
======
willholloway
Autologous mesenchymal stem cells are turning out to be one of the most
underappreciated advancements in medicine today, and scandalously the FDA is
slowing progress in the field by seeking to prevent doctors from harvesting
and reintroducing one's own stem cells back into the body.

MSC's can be harvested from one's own adipose tissue with a little bit of
liposuction.

The process of separating the stem cells from fat is called stromal vascular
fraction.

It's an astoundingly easy process to do [1]. The equipment is inexpensive, and
so far the procedure has been shown to be safe.

MSC's have been shown to improve COPD, and reduce the allergic response that
triggers asthma. Skin damage healed, cartilage and joint injuries repaired,
and even MS put in to remission,

MSC's administered via IV flock to areas of inflammation and damage and begin
to repair it. The cells know what to do. Local administration is even better,
as in this study or in cases of back pain and joint injuries.

Autologous treatments should not be considered biological drugs and subject to
monopolization by biotech companies through decade long clinical trials and
FDA approval.

These are our own cells from our own bodies. Doctors should be free to
practice and innovate in this sphere, and in this case innovation is mostly
just dosage, frequency and delivery method because the cells know what to do.

I believe that in the next decade or two, autologous stem cell treatments will
be basic preventative care for everyone, a treatment each year will repair
damage before it becomes pathology.

[1]
[https://www.miltenyibiotec.com/~/media/Files/Navigation/Rese...](https://www.miltenyibiotec.com/~/media/Files/Navigation/Research/Stem%20Cell/SP_MSC_lipoaspirate_protocol.ashx)

~~~
markkat
I've been working with MSCs for more than 15 years, mostly in stroke, and I
agree completely. It's worth noting that this trial used donor cells, and that
might be part of the reason they don't remain after a couple of months. There
is evidence that autologous cells persist longer, likely because they aren't
swept up by immune rejection.

What we and others have found is that age of the donor inversely correlates to
their therapeutic potential. For that reason, I founded Forever Labs, Inc.
[http://www.foreverlabs.co/](http://www.foreverlabs.co/)

We bank young MSCs so that they can be preserved for therapy later in life. I
banked my own two months ago.

We prefer bone marrow MSCs as the BM also contains blood progenitor and stem
cells, whereas adipose tissue does not.

*We are fast expanding and raising; email in bio. ;)

~~~
msane
If you banked your cells today at the age of 30, how much therapy can be
hypothetically produced from that in the future?

Is it a store that depletes as you use it? Or can banked stem cells be
replicated to create more reserves?

~~~
markkat
Different therapies will likely require different numbers of cells, and most
clinical trials using MSCs involve preliminary expansion of the cells. We
store multiple aliquots of your cells so that only a portion may be thawed at
a time.

We don't expand the cells at this time, but will likely offer expansion
services in the future.

Yes, by expanding you could create a very large reserve of cells.

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Omnius
The study seems focused on just motor skill improvements. Was there work done
to see if it helped with aphasia? Could this help aphasia?

~~~
umanwizard
It makes no sense to me that this is marked dead. Seems like a totally
reasonable question.

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reasonattlm
The primary difference between this and most of the stem cell therapies
delivering mesechymal stem cells - which are more or less the standard type of
cell to use for the moment, the most studied and most characterized, no-one
got fired for using mesenchymal stem cells, etc - such as those widely
available via medical tourism is the delivery to the brain. That isn't
something clinics do, for all the obvious reasons.

So I'm inclined to think that this is one of a number of different studies in
recent years to demonstrate that the delivery methodology makes just as much
of a difference as the type of cell lineage and any tinkering done to that
cell lineage.

------
narrator
They've been doing this kind of thing over in China for some time now[1].
Science with a capital 'S' doesn't happen until the U.S does it though, and
until that point and time all procedures are considered risky and dangerous.
Even if you're going to die before any of it gets approved, you better not do
any of this stuff.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/fu2ub/as_requested_i_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/fu2ub/as_requested_i_am_working_in_a_stem_cell/)

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jawns
Many people are aware that soon after President Obama took office, he
authorized federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, which President
Bush had resisted. The Obama administration made a big deal out of it at the
time:

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/removing-
barrier...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/removing-barriers-
responsible-scientific-research-involving-human-stem-cells)

What got swept under the rug was that at the same time, President Obama
specifically rescinded a previous executive order that directed the HHS to
"conduct and support" research using adult stem cells:

[https://www.cellmedicine.com/obama-executive-
order/](https://www.cellmedicine.com/obama-executive-order/)

I don't think the Obama administration ever spelled out why, at the same time
it was promoting ESCR, it decided to also deprioritize adult stem cell
research, but I think this latest news -- along with all of the other advances
of the past eight years -- has shown that moral issues aside, adult stem cell
research is paying high dividends.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I don't think the Obama administration ever spelled out why, at the same
> time it was promoting ESCR, it decided to also deprioritize adult stem cell
> research

It was all part of the same EO, which was accompanied on the same day by a
Presidential Memorandum on scientific integrity in government decisionmaking
on science and technology, and the rationale for the set of policy changes was
explicitly to move toward allowing decisions on what avenues of science to
pursue (not the goals, but the routes to the goals) to be guided by science
rather than politics.

It wasn't deprioritizing adult stem cell research, it was letting the relative
priority of adult stem research be set, and adjusted, over time based on
science, rather than being set by political directive.

------
mrfusion
I read they don't turn into new neurons but rather release chemicals that
stimulate growth and repair. Am I understanding correctly?

~~~
bronz
yeah, they say that the stem cells actually disappear after about a month but
improvement continues well afterward. and they say its because of growth
factors released by these cells.

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hangonhn
Is it possible that the procedure itself, the act of drilling and poking
needles into the brain, stimulated the improvement? The stem cells didn't
linger and they're precursors to skeletal muscular cells so maybe they
actually had no effect on the outcome? Is it possible/ethical to do studies
where they drill and poke into the brain without injecting stem cells?

~~~
IanCal
The article mentions they're now getting ready for a larger double blind
trial. This one was I think a test for safety.

------
mrfusion
I wonder why only 7 out of the 18 patients showed improvement? What could that
mean?

~~~
thomasrossi
You should compare that 7/18 with what happened to other 18 in the same
condition. 1 year after stroke, it is quite safe to say that 0/18 would have
any improvement in 1 month (the patients were testes also 1 month after).

~~~
davak
Doc here. Not negative on this story, but it is completely false to say 0/18
would have improvement with standard care. Patients frequently improve from
strokes; some quite rapidly. Maybe you had a typo?

The next step is intervention versus placebo. Strokes are very common. It
should be easy to find patients to enroll.

Hopefully this will turn out to work and be worth the cost.

~~~
thomasrossi
1 year after the stroke, the difference in a month is very limited in my
experience. I am not a doc, but I've crunched some numbers related to this
topic, what was your experience?

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nialv7
What I found to be worrying is that the researchers seems to be unclear about
how MSC is causing the improvements.

Also the improvements continues after the stem cells have disappeared. This
seems to suggest the effect doesn't come from the MSC, but rather the
chemicals the cell produces. Does that mean if we can synthesis the chemicals,
we don't need the cell?

------
rpedela
I hope the next trial works too, this is amazing. I wonder if this technique
would work for other brain disorders like Alzheimer's?

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imjustsaying
Where's the link to the study?

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paxcoder
Well, it looks like we can advance science without pretending killing human
beings is ok, after all.

~~~
dang
This comment and others you've posted break the HN guidelines. Please
(re-)read them, and post civilly and substantively (or not at all) from now
on.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

~~~
paxcoder
Please specify which ones and exactly how.

~~~
dang
HN's rules don't work that way, partly because formalizing them would merely
turn them into a long list with an infinite number of loopholes to be
exploited, and partly because we'd die of boredom if we tried.

Users here are simply expected to live by the spirit of the law—civility and
substantiveness—when commenting here. Snarky one-liners that characterize a
(vague) opposing view as "killing human beings" fail the "civil and
substantive" test. Plus there's outright rudeness in comments such as
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11663455](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11663455)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11651181](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11651181),
which has no place here.

~~~
paxcoder
I always substantiate any of my one-liners. In this particular case see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11836930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11836930)
. Few things are more deserving of "snarky" treatment.

The other two (chronologically disordered) examples are a product of my
indignation with an obstinate person who wasted people's time and, brazenly
ignoring their arguments as well as my own, continued arguing FUD.

Bottom point: I am not malicious and I contribute. So I'd appreciate if the
trigger was not pulled on me even though it's probably the only way to get
one's comments removed from here :-/

