Sydney Stem Cell Breakthrough

Hi, this came across my desk today... very very exciting for all of us,
and an example of how fund raising directly helps research

Stem cell breakthrough by Sydney scientists

Louise Hall
March 5, 2009

SCIENTISTS in Sydney have become the first in the world to use adult
stem cells to regrow damaged muscle tissue, offering hope to sufferers
of incurable diseases such as muscular dystrophy.

The breakthrough procedure has been proven to regenerate muscle in a
mouse engineered to have an injured skeletal muscle, but the concept
could also be applied to human diseases such as lung disorders, chronic
liver disease, and types I and II diabetes.

The team of gene therapy, cancer and muscle disease experts solved one
of the biggest hurdles involving stem cell therapy in solid organs -
getting the donor cells to survive for more than an hour after they are
inserted into the damaged host tissue.

The lead author, Peter Gunning, the head of the Oncology Research Unit
at the University of NSW, said until now, the new healthy cells had no
survival advantage over the dominant existing damaged tissue.

Furthermore, injected donor cells were almost immediately wiped out by
the immune system.

"In muscle, most stem cells die in the first hour or are present in such
low numbers that they are not much help," Professor Gunning said.

The most well-established form of cell replacement therapy, bone marrow
transplants, have been performed successfully for 40 years. However
solid tissue such as muscle is much more complicated and previous trials
have yet to work successfully.

Scientists from the Children's Hospital at Westmead and Sydney and NSW
universities tried to enhance the stem cells' survival chances by
inserting an artificial, harmless virus - called a vector - into the
cells, making them resistant to chemotherapy.

The diseased tissue is then killed off by chemotherapy, leaving room for
the healthy cells to engraft and propagate.

"It's the first strategy that gives the good guys the edge in the battle
to cure sick tissues," Professor Gunning said.

The experimental technique, funded by the Oncology Children's Foundation
and published in the journal Stem Cells, is still at the pre-clinical
stage but Professor Gunning said human clinical trials could start
within three to five years.

This story was found at:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/03/04/1235842487806.html