Remember all the whining and complaining that those old 21 approved “Bush lines” of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) were tired, contaminated, aging, and useless (despite facts to the contrary), and the cry for more and newer lines? And the celebration when President Obama’s new Executive Order and NIH guidelines opened the door to use of many more hESC lines? No more having to deal with those old hESC lines, bring on as many new lines as you can make from destroyed embryos, a cornucopia of hESC lines available from which to choose. NIH approved the first new lines in December 2009, and 44 lines are now available for taxpayer-funded research (a new line, UCSF4 derived in April 2009, was approved on 12 March 2010), and over 100 more lines have been submitted to qualify for funding. Along with an increase in funds for human embryonic stem cell research, all seemed well for wide-open ESC science.

OOPS! Turns out those tired old useless hESC lines were… extremely valuable! They were, and are, the gold standard for human embryonic stem cells. They’re what almost every hESC scientist has studied. They’re thoroughly characterized and familiar cells.

Now, a number of scientists are realizing just how valuable are those well-characterized hESC lines. Despite the increased funding and many more lines from which to choose, many hESC scientists want… those tired old “Bush” lines. They are complaining that so far the new policy is more of a burden than a boon to their work. Some of the scientists say they’re stunned by the irony. Apparently ideology and desire trumped science.

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Scientific dogma has long held that a single stem cell is responsible for all of the components of the blood system. Now in a paper published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, a group at Baylor College of Medicine is challenging that dogma. The group found that there were different, distinct adult stem cell subtypes that contribute to different components of the blood system. They verified the “stem cell nature” of these different subtypes by transplanting single stem cells into individual mice, and were able to confirm that these subtypes exist, can maintain a stable population of the stem cells over time, and behave as expected. Senior author Dr. Margaret Goodell said:

“From a scientific point of view, it’s making us re-evaluate the view of the stem cells that come from adults. It challenges the dogma that there is one type of stem cell.”

The study has significance for stem cell patient treatments as well. According to Goodell:

“People have been looking for purer and purer stem cell types. In doing that, they may not be getting all the stem cell types they need. Maybe in the clinic, it is better to have less pure types.”

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Growing lots of adult stem cells in the lab, for study or for a patient treatment, has been difficult in the past. While some groups have successfully grown large numbers of adult stem cells, many labs have difficulties keeping the cells growing for more than a few days. Now scientists at Weill Cornell have shown that culturing adult stem cells with endothelial cells, the cells that compose the innermost linings of blood vessels, is the key to growing unlimited amounts of adult stem cells. The research group reasoned that because endothelial cells line blood vessels and are often in contact with adult stem cells, these cells might play a significant role in the growth and maintenance of stem cells. Using a mouse model, the scientists were able to grow adult stem cells for weeks at a time and increase the number of cells over 400-fold. They also showed that even after one year, there was no indication of tumor formation from the adult stem cells. Senior author, Dr. Shahin Rafii, noted:

“This study will have a major impact on the treatment of any blood-related disorder that requires a stem cell transplant.”

Previous work from Dr. Rafii’s lab had demonstrated that endothelial cells are not “passive conduits”
for delivery of oxygen and nutrients but also produce novel stem-cell-active growth factors.

The breakthrough promises broad clinical benefits, from bone marrow transplantation to therapies for heart, brain, skin and lungs. If the system continues to be validated, physicians could use any source of hematopoietic (blood-forming) stem cells, grow large numbers, and bank the adult stem cells for transplantation into patients.

The paper is published in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

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In the latest Mapping America, the National Survey of Family Growth shows that women in always-intact marriages who worship at least weekly are more likely to have had fewer lifetime sexual partners than those in other family structures who never worship.

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Today (3/2/10), the Supreme Court heard arguments as to whether the 2^nd Amendment’s right for individuals “to keep and bear arms” against the federal government can be applied to the States.  The case is McDonald v. City of Chicago, and it made some news in a page one, above-the fold story in the Washington Times today (Matthew Cella, “Gun Rights Lawyer Gives Hope to Liberal Causes.”).  All conservatives want the Supreme Court to hold that the Second Amendment should be applied to state and municipal laws.

The main issue is how you link the Second Amendment to protections against the states.  (There is a long legal story here involving the Fourteenth Amendment and what is known as “incorporation doctrine.”)  The lead attorney for the “conservative” side, Alan Gura, wants the Court to let the Second Amendment operate via a particular constitutional provision – the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause –  that has been dormant for 137 years.  The Family Research Council joined an amicus brief arguing AGAINST this position saying that reviving this clause would be like Christmas-come-early for judicial activists.  One of the lead attorneys on the amicus brief, Ken Klukowski, is quoted in the Times piece:

Constitutional scholar Ken Klukowski warned that a ruling incorporating the Second Amendment based on privileges or immunities and overturning Slaughterhouse could have broad political implications.

“Slaughterhouse may be second only to Marbury v. Madison as the most impactful Supreme Court decision of all time,” he said. “It could fundamentally rewrite the nature of what goes on in this country.”

Mr. Klukowski wrote an amicus brief in support of Mr. Gura’s case filed by a handful of conservative groups, including the American Civil Rights Union (ACRU), a nonprofit organization founded by Robert B. Carleson, who was an adviser to President Reagan.

The group, whose policy board includes conservative legal heavyweights such as former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III and former Solicitor General Kenneth W. Starr, supports incorporation of the Second Amendment through the privileges or immunities clause but asks the court not to overturn the Slaughterhouse Cases decision.

“The Privileges or Immunities Clause could be used as a source for judicial activism unlike anything America has ever seen,” the group said on its Web site.

Please take a look at our amicus brief – link provided above – to see the entire argument.

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Two new published studies provide further evidence for the effectiveness of adult stem cells in repairing heart damage, and suggest possible mechanisms for how the cells work.

A Brazil-Florida collaboration found that adult stem cells injected directly into the heart could relieve angina. The researchers used injection directly into the heart based on previous results showing higher uptake of cells administered in this way. All eight of the angina patients in the study benefitted. Lead author Dr. Nelson Americo Hossne, Jr. said:

“For our patients, angina symptom relief began as early as three months post-procedure with continuing improvement through the twelfth month and sustained improvement past 18 months. Symptom relief improved in all patients, suggesting that the effect is sustained, not transitory.”

The authors conclude that their results show the procedure to be safe and effective, and suggest neoangiogenesis, the stimulation of new blood vessel growth, as the main stem cell mechanism of action in these patients.

A separate published study by Chinese scientists suggests that a small protein called apelin, which affects the strength of muscle contraction, may play a role in adult stem cell repair of heart. Twenty patients experiencing severe heart failure were treated with their own bone marrow adult stem cells, while another twenty heart failure patients were treated with standard medications; both groups were compared against twenty healthy adults. All twenty of the heart failure patients treated with adult stem cells showed significant improvement in cardiac function within 21 days of treatment, while the standard medication patients showed no improvement. Interestingly, the adult stem cell-treated patients showed a large increase in levels of apelin, correlated with the improvement in cardiac function. They postulate that the secretion of apelin is induced by the grafted adult stem cells.

Both studies were published in the journal Cell Transplantation. Dr. Amit Patel of the University of Utah School of Medicine and an Editor of the journal said:

“Both studies demonstrate a possible mechanistic approach in a clinical trial either. These important findings further enhance the understanding of the use of bone marrow derived cell therapy for the treatment of cardiovascular disease.”

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An international team of scientists has used modified adult stem cells to repair the spinal cord in rats, restoring function. In spinal cord injury, the protective insulating sheath around the spinal cord is destroyed, a process called demyelination. Without the normal insulation, spinal cord nerves can’t send electrical impulses. The scientists isolated adult spinal cord stem cells, then modified them to produce the protein ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF), a growth factor that stimulates cell survival and nerve growth. The results, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, showed recovered signaling in spinal cords of the treated rats and enhanced recovery of hindlimb movement. The authors conclude that using modified adult stem cells can enhance remyelination and facilitate functional recovery after traumatic spinal cord injury. Patients have already been treated with similar nasal adult stem cells. The authors of this current study note that besides confirming previous results with adult stem cells, these results indicate that optimal recovery will include grafts with additional stimulation such as the added growth factor they used.

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UCLA scientists have shown that they can engineer adult blood stem cells so that they lack a molecule necessary for HIV infection. The CCR5 receptor is a protein molecule on the surface of cells that is bound by HIV when the virus infects certain immune cells, acting as a receptor for the virus. The scientists used “short hairpin RNA” to knock down the expression of the CCR5 molecule in the human adult stem cells, effectively preventing the protein from being produced. These cells could reconstitute the immune system in a mouse model, indicating that the function of the immune cells was not inhibited. But the human cells, now without the CCR5 protein receptor, resisted HIV infection. The study, published in the journal Blood, provides a potential method for controlling HIV infection in patients.

The study follows a previous report of successful adult stem cell treatment for leukemia that also appears to have controlled HIV infection in the patient. The doctors specifically used an adult stem cell donor whose cells lacked the CCR5 molecule.

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Compared to the questionable success of embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells have been achieving some real successes in retinal repair studies, without the complication issues of tumors, etc. and without the ethical problems associated with embryonic stem cells.

A couple of examples of recently published studies.

In a paper published February 15, 2010, Oregon scientists showed that they could use bone marrow-derived adult stem cells to treat a rat model of retinitis pigmentosa. Visual function was significantly preserved in this study. An added benefit was that the cells could be easily grown in culture and administered intravenously; once injected, they traveled to the retina where they exerted their protective effect. The study highlights the possibility of using a patient’s own adult stem cells for treatment of retinitis, diabetic retinopathy, and macular degeneration.

A study by Canadian and Japanese researchers used human retinal stem cells that had been modified to increase their differentiation potential. When injected into the eyes of mice, the adult stem cells survived and differentiated into photoreceptors. Injected into a mutant mouse strain that lacks functional photoreceptors, the adult stem cells significantly improved visual function. The study was published online in the journal Stem Cells December 11, 2009.

In Louisville, they are close to initiating a clinical trial using adult stem cells for treatment of macular degeneration.

Looking at a different part of the eye, adult stem cells have already been used successfully in patients to treat corneal blindness.

There are other examples of real adult stem cell successes for visual repair if we want to go back further. And unlike “potential” embryonic stem cell experiments which rely on sacrificing some human beings, adult stem cell research doesn’t require destroying the cell donor, instead often using the patient’s own adult stem cells for the treatment. Real success and real science.

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A news story out yesterday exemplifies the “successes” of embryonic stem cells. The story proclaimed that scientists had “successfully used mouse embryonic stem cells to replace diseased retinal cells and restore sight in a mouse model of retinitis pigmentosa.” Sounds pretty good? Later there is the requisite hyperbole about treatments, that “Once the complication issues are addressed” and a list of retinal diseases that will be treated with embryonic stem cells.

Wait a minute. Complication issues?

However, complications of benign tumors and retinal detachments were seen in some of the mice, so Dr. Tsang and colleagues will optimize techniques to decrease the incidence of these complications in human embryonic stem cells before testing in human patients can begin.

I would hope that they’d eliminate the complications first, not just decrease the incidence. And just how many of the mice are represented by “some”?

The abstract in the journal Transplantation gives a bit more detail:

Although more than half of the mice were complicated with retinal detachments or tumor development, one fourth of the mice showed increased electroretinogram responses in the transplanted eyes.

So, a quarter of the mice showed improvement, but more than half showed complications including tumors…

So much for an embryonic success.

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When she was 30, Jennifer Osman was diagnosed with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), a neurological disorder that attacks the peripheral nervous system, progressively weakening and numbing its victim. She began the usual treatment of immunosuppressant therapy. As the disease progressed, Jennifer was at the hospital three or four times a week. As things progressed, she became weaker and nearly paralyzed. Her husband Rick said that she had become so bad that she had no strength in her arms & legs, and he had to carry her to bed and sometimes even had to feed her. They were told that the disease could eventually attack the nerves supporting her lungs and stop her from breathing, killing her by the time she was 40.

Then Jennifer signed up for an adult stem cell study run by Dr. Richard Burt, chief of the Division of Immunotherapy at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Her adult stem cells were collected and she received chemotherapy to knock out the rogue immune cells attacking her nervous system. Shortly after, on April 1, 2005, Jennifer received a transplant of her own adult stem cells and her immune system, now rebooted, began to rebuild itself. The process was slow and grueling, but she has taken no medication for the disease since 2008. Today, almost five years since her transplant, she is nearly symptom-free.

“This is my life, a healthy life. Back to normal.”

Rick points out:

“It’s really important to us that people know (about the stem cell procedure), because we found out about this from watching TV. If we hadn’t seen that broadcast, she probably wouldn’t be here today.”

The Osmans have a website to tell Jennifer’s story and communicate with other CIDP patients. Jennifer is looking forward to updating the site on April 1, five years to the day that she received her adult stem cell transplant.

You can see a video of Amy Daniels (another of Burt’s patients) and her story of treatment for scleroderma, as well as other patient stories, at Stem Cell Research Facts.

Dr. Burt has performed the first adult stem cell transplants in the country, and sometimes in the world, for patients with many autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease, systemic lupus erythematosus, Type I (juvenile) diabetes, and of course CIDP. Burt said Northwestern has done about 350 of these transplants so far. A number of his clinical trials are currently ongoing, including one for CIDP. Dr. Burt says:

“When I first came up with this idea … people said, ‘Why are you wasting your time?’ I ended up following my passion, and it’s been fabulous. The amazing thing is, traditional medicine has just kind of come to a stop with these patients. What we’ve done is we’ve changed that.”

According to Burt, the treatment has come a long way, as Medicare and several insurance companies will now cover it.

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Previous stories focused on the science of treating peripheral artery disease with adult stem cells. Often overlooked are the people whose lives have been changed or even saved by adult stem cell treatments.

Helen Thomas, 80, of Hastings, Michigan is one of those people. Helen’s painful circulatory problem in her leg meant she had trouble walking, rarely left home, and was facing amputation of her leg. But her physician, Kenneth Merriman of Hastings, asked around at a medical conference and found Dr. Randall Franz, who was doing a clinical trial at Grant Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio. Franz injected Helen’s own adult stem cells into her leg, causing new blood vessels to grow. Helen is now up and about, back to normal.

“It was a miracle. I’m walking, and I wouldn’t be walking without the stem cells. I have my leg. They saved my life. I told them they saved my life.”

Helen’s daughter Mary said:

“It’s just life-changing”

Initial patient results have been published in the Journal of Vascular Surgery.

HT: Andy McDonald

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In the latest Mapping America, adults in always-intact marriages who attend religious services at least weekly are the least likely to believe that most people try to take advantage of others.

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Last Friday the National Institutes of Health announced that they were proposing a “technical change” in their Guidelines for destruction of human embryos, a.k.a. Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research.

The change would allow use of younger human embryos in experiments. As published today in the Federal Register, the change in definition for embryonic stem cells would be:

For the purpose of these Guidelines, “human embryonic stem cells (hESCs)” are cells that are derived from the inner cell mass of blastocyst stage human embryos pluripotent cells that are derived from early stage human embryos, up to and including the blastocyst stage, are capable of dividing without differentiating for a prolonged period in culture, and are known to develop into cells and tissues of the three primary germ layers.

You can submit comments on this proposed change. Note that the deadline for comments is 11:59pm EST on March 24, 2010 (a 30-day comment period.) Apparently NIH doesn’t want to read a lot of critiques–comments are limited to 6,000 characters, including spaces. It remains to be seen whether NIH will ignore the majority of comments as it did for the initial guidelines.

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Last week I posted a blog on President Obama’s decision to aggressively use executive power to implement his agenda in areas where his legislative agenda seems unlikely to succeed.  Today’s Washington Times editorializes on this topic (“Obama the Philosopher King: The O Force Uses Executive Power to Get around the Pesky Congress,” p. B2). In it, the paper’s editorial board notes among other things:

Exploiting executive power is nothing new for Mr. Obama. He has appointed more executive-branch policy “czars” than any of his predecessors…. But last fall, Mr. Obama pressured Democrats in the Senate to kill legislation that would have brought his czars under congressional oversight.

Mr. Obama claimed emergency powers to reshape two of the Big Three auto manufacturers. He has sought the authority to assume extraordinary powers to deal with cyber threats and purported climate change. He has used executive orders to pursue pet causes, such as EO 13502, which effectively banned nonunion labor from federal construction projects, and EO 13509, which established the Soviet-sounding Council on Automotive Communities and Workers. Even Mr. Obama’s liberal supporters have blanched at his claims of power regarding extraordinary rendition, surveillance, state secrets, signing statements and executive privilege.

So, we at FRC are not alone in noticing this alarming trend in the administration’s behavior.  Stay tuned for further developments.

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Ronald Reagan’s 99^th birthday would have been on February 6, 2011, had he lived.  Thus, it was refreshing to hear an excellent radio interview with one of America’s best economic journalists, Robert Samuelson, discussing Reagan’s greatest accomplishment – defeating the inflation that had crippled the American economy in the 1970s.  The interview on John Batchelor’s radio show (found here, 2/13/2010, 9pm-10pm) is roughly coincidental with the paperback release of Samuelson’s The Great Inflation and Its Aftermath.

Reagan allowed the Federal Reserve chief, Paul Volcker, to throw the country into a brutal recession in which unemployment reached 10.8%.  Samuelson notes that Volcker could never have achieved the defeat of inflation without the support of the sitting president.  Reagan’s approval ratings went down to 39% in 1982, but he never wavered.  Reagan realized that Jimmy Carter’s inflation had destroyed the faith of the American people in the economic-political system.  He also understood economics well enough to know that the country could not flourish with systemic inflation, so he resolved to end it even if it destroyed him politically.  This is great statesmanship, and it sets Reagan apart in a manner matched by only a few presidents.

I agree with Samuelson that this was Ronald Reagan’s signal achievement.  Had he not solved the economic crisis – there would not have been a second term and no victory in the Cold War.  Conservatism would have been completely discredited.  All those victories rested on Reagan’s economic victory and that paved the way for decades of low interest rates and low inflation.  Samuelson is absolutely correct that Reagan’s tremendous political courage and economic insight have been overlooked and trivialized.  Thus, Samuelson wrote his book, to refresh our memories lest we forget what Reagan and Volcker accomplished and lest we forget the poisonous effects of Keynesian inflation.

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In the latest Mapping America, always-intact married adults are less likely than married, previously divorced adults and unmarried adults to believe that most people would try to take advantage of others.

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A deeply worrisome article appeared in the New York Times on Saturday (2/13/10).  It has received much attention on Monday’s radio programs.  The article by Peter Baker is entitled “Obama is Making Plans to Use Executive Power for Action on Several Fronts.”  Baker tells us that the President is “preparing an array of actions using his executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal, and other domestic policy priorities.”  And Baker continues with this observation, “Any president has vast authority to influence policy even without legislation, through executive orders, agency rule-making and administrative fiat.”

Translation:  now that various Obama legislative (i.e., democratic) efforts have failed, it is time to force his policies on the nation through the diktat available to the head of the American federal administrative state.  Of all the items mentioned in the article, the most destructive is probably the Administration’s plan to begin regulating carbon emissions via the Environmental Protection Agency.  This will be enormously costly for the American economy, and it comes at a time when the science supporting man-made climate change is collapsing.  (See these articles as evidence: here, here, here, here and here (listed on Mark Levin’s website.)  The collapse of scientific support may provide some minimal chance that the federal courts might block or alter EPA’s rulemaking efforts, but EPA clearly has the upper hand in any litigation.  Congress needs to eliminate EPA’s authority to regulate carbon emissions until some scientific clarity emerges.

In a slightly differently category is the Administration’s apparent decision to stop enforcing the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” which is statutorily mandated and has been in effect for approximately 16 years.  It seems axiomatic that if the administration wants to change the policy, Congress needs to change the law.

The article deals at length with presidential recess appointments, and President Obama’s threat to make use of them.  The use of “holds” by members of the Senate seems to have gotten out of hand.  All that said, the appointment power is far different from unilateral executive branch lawmaking – which was never remotely considered by our Founding Fathers.  And, here, we see plans for this constitutional abuse to be taken to new levels.

America is rapidly becoming a judicial and bureaucratic oligarchy.  This institutional development is a threat conservatives and libertarians need to focus on much more seriously.  This development is even more dangerous when coupled with the crony capitalism (corporatism) that is emerging from government ownership or subsidization of American industries.  The United States is beginning to resemble the corrupt England of George III’s era where commercial monopolies were sold by the Crown drawing the ire of the American colonists and men like Adam Smith.

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Researchers at the Medical College of Georgia are conducting the first FDA-approved adult stem cell clinical trial in cerebral palsy. The trial, led by Dr. James Carroll, professor and chief of pediatric neurology in MCG School of Medicine, will investigate whether stem cells from umbilical cord blood can improve the quality of life for children with cerebral palsy. Umbilical cord blood is rich in adult-type stem cells, which can divide and morph into different types of cells throughout the body and have already shown published success in treating numerous diseases and injuries in patients.

Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg at Duke has done preliminary clinical work in this area and notes that in about 100 children, intravenous administration of autologous (the person’s own) cord blood is safe and feasible. Her results are as yet unpublished, and she cautions that there are “some hints that there may be some benefits” but that “it’s very, very difficult to successfully assess efficacy.” Previous anecdotal reports have indicated benefits for treated children.

Benefits of cord blood stem cells vs. embryonic stem cells were recently reviewed by Harris in the British Journal of Haematology.

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Just in time for Valentine’s Day, scientists at Birmingham University’s Nanoscale Physics Research Lab have produced a picture of the world’s smallest Valentine heart–palladium atoms clustered together, only 8 nanometers wide. The palladium atoms spontaneously clustered together in this arrangement when placed on a special carbon base. The heart had to be viewed through a powerful electron microscope.

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