The full report was published on January 9 by an open source medical journal, BioMed Central. If the procedure it describes can be replicated, it is promising indeed. Researchers claim to have a device that “educates” the patient’s own stem cells.
The device is called a “Stem Cell Educator.” Apparently when the patient’s blood passes through the device, stem cells naturally occurring in the patient’s blood are “educated” or re-set to a more normal, functional level. The device separates the patients blood, selecting lymphocytes for special treatment by exposing them to stem cells that were originally derived from donor human umbilical cords.
No cells are exchanged or added to the patient’s blood. Instead, the patient’s own cells are reset by exposure to specific factors given off by the donor stem cells that are kept in a living culture inside the device. After two or three hours of “education,” the patient’s lymphocytes seem to perform a lot better.
The result? Researchers claim in their report that “a single treatment produces lasting improvement in metabolic control. In initial results indicate Stem Cell Educator therapy reverses autoimmunity and promotes regeneration of isletβcells.” The need for insulin was reduced and the benefits lasted at least as long as 40 weeks after the treatment.
The study also makes this claim:
Successful immune modulation by CB-SCs and the resulting clinical improvement in patient status may have important implications for other autoimmune and inflammation-related diseases without the safety and ethical concerns associated with conventional stem cell-based approaches.
Whether these findings are replicated is a key question at this point. The claims are pretty extraordinary, but the general strategy of "re-educating" rather than replacing cells seems to be showing a lot of promise. For an example, see my earlier post, "Is Aging a Disease of Stem Cells?"
The study was led Yong Zhao of the University of Illinois at Chicago, who directed an international team and prepared the report, entitled “Reversal of type 1 diabetes via islet beta cell regeneration following immune modulation by cord blood-derived multipotent stem cells.” The full text is published by the online journal BioMed Central and is freely available to the public.
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