Tonight:
9°c
Paralysed patients to be given pioneering stem cell treatment
Mark Prigg23.01.09
The first human trials using stem cells to treat paralysed patients are to be given the go-ahead today, it has been announced.
The controversial experiments are to begin within months in what experts hail as a new era for medicine.
Stem cells have the ability to grow into any cell in the body. It is hoped that by injecting them into patients, the cells will prompt regrowth of damaged nerves, restoring sensation and movement.
Today's ruling by the Food and Drug Administration will allow doctors to inject stem cells into patients for the first time. It marks a major change in US government policy and comes as President Barack Obama prepares to lift a ban on government-funded stem cell research imposed by President Bush.
To be run by US firm Geron, the new trials will be conducted on people seven to 14 days after they suffer their spinal injury. It cannot help those already paralysed for longer.
Dr Thomas Okarma of California-based Geron said: “This marks the beginning of what is potentially a new chapter in medical therapeutics — one that reaches beyond pills to a new level of healing: the restoration of organ and tissue function by the injection of healthy replacement cells.” If results are positive, the therapy could be approved for wider use within three to five years. The use of stem cells is considered unethical by “pro-life” groups because it involves destroying embryos.
Dr Okarma criticised delays in approving the trial. “The people who will take part in our trials are currently walking around, like you and me,” he said. “But the delay has meant that there are people out there who might have benefited, but who now cannot.”
Robert Klein, the chairman of California's stem-cell research programme claimed the Bush administration had pressured the FDA to delay the trial.
If the trials are successful, the treatment could be extended to patients who suffer the same disability as the late Superman actor Christopher Reeve. Reeve was paralysed from the neck down after falling from his horse during a competition in May 1995. He died of a heart attack in 2004, aged 52.
