Kevin Rudd pledged $125 million for stem cell research. Regenerative medicine researcher Associate Professor Ernst Wolvetang explains the science and what the investment could mean.
What does $125 million in funding for regenerative medicine researchpledged by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterdaybuy you?
Regenerative medicine is an umbrella term for therapies that involve either the delivery of stem cells to a damaged or diseased tissue or the enhancement of endogenous (stem cell mediated) repair mechanisms of the body. Its not a novel concept; a bone marrow transfer is a tried-and-tested stem cell therapy, transplanting and replacing blood cell-forming stem cells from one individual to the bone marrow of another.
Mesenchymal stem cells can be isolated from a variety of tissues such as blood, fat or placenta and have the ability to generate cartilage, fat and bone. These stem cells can home to sites of injury, have immune system-dampening properties (allowing transplantation from one donor into an unrelated person) and excrete factors that promote blood vessel formation. Because of these properties it can benefit the recovery of patients after a heart attack or other ailments. Australian company Mesoblast has been successfully developing and marketing this stem cell product.
Embryonic stem cells are probably the most powerful type of stem cell known to sciencethey can grow indefinitely andhave the ability to make anycell type of the human body. Because of their perceived ethically encumbered origin (day five surplus IVF embryos), embryonic stem cells have received a lot of attention and suffer from the drawback that delivery of embryonic stem cell-derived cells to a patient will likely involve lifelong immunosuppression (similar to organ transplants).
In recent years both the ethical barrier and the immune rejection issues have been overcome by the advent of cell reprogramming, a process pioneered by Professor John Yamanaka and Professor ShinyaGurdon, who received the Nobel Prize for their discovery. Cell reprogramming allows the artificial generation of embryonic stem cell-like stem cells (so called induced pluripotent stem cells) from small quantities of skin or blood cells. This has opened the way for the generation of patient-specific stem cells and potentially personalised stem cell repair kits.
Indeed, in animal models these induced pluripotent stem cells can, for example, generate dopaminergic cells that can improve Parkinsons disease or insulin-producing cells that can improve diabetes. Induced pluripotent stem cells now also make it possible to study genetic diseases that manifest themselves in difficult-to-access human cell types such as brain, heart and kidney cells.
The potential of such iPSC-derived cell types for drug screening has certainly not gone unnoticed by the pharmaceutical industry. The first clinical trial with iPSC-derived cells aimed at treating macular degeneration (a disease of the retina that leads to blindness) was recently started in Japan. Japan has invested more than $800 million in CIRA to accelerate iPSC cell-based therapies. Large investments in stem cell-based regenerative medicine have occurred in California ($2 billion), Canada and Europe, and China has been following suit with its own initiatives.
Dont expect miracle cures for these ailmentsbut its reasonable to expect small tangible victories in five to 10 years.
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What Rudd’s $125m could mean for regenerative medicine research