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Man in remission from blood cancer and HIV after remarkable treatment
- ilaksh 3y agoHere's a dumb question: is it possible to culture stem cells? Or make more of them? Or does every stem cell have to be donated?
- hammock 3y agoThe process is commonly known as stem cell culture or stem cell expansion. Stem cells have the unique ability to self-renew, meaning they can divide and produce more stem cells while maintaining their undifferentiated state.
- colechristensen 3y agoYou can build stem cell lines that reproduce stem cells. You can also "go backwards" from skin stem cells to fully featured stem cells. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584308/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584308/ >Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, are a type of pluripotent stem cell derived from adult somatic cells. They have been reprogrammed through inducing genes and factors to be pluripotent. iPS cells are similar to embryonic stem (ES) cells in many aspects.
- trdtaylor1 3y agoYou can even do it without 100% causing cancer now. here's a breakdown of the current progress in a chart. https://www.lifespan.io/wp-content/webp-express/webp-images/doc-root/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Partial-reprogramming-timeline.png.webp https://www.lifespan.io/wp-content/webp-express/webp-images/...
- vaylian 3y agoNot a dumb question at all. The difficulty with cells from multicellular organisms is that they are used to be part of a larger organism. Isolating individual cells and keeping them alive is very difficult. The oldest cultured human cell line are HeLa cells[1] which are derived from cervical cancer cells and they are therefore not normal human cells. Cancer evolves to be resilient and is therefore easier to cultivate than regular well-behaving cells. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeLa
- tempestn 3y agoAnd another one: could we take someone's own stem cells, edit this mutation into them with CRISPR, culture more of them, and then re-implant them?
- bluGill 3y agoYes in theory. However there is a lot of tricky parts that mean we are not doing this in real humans often it at all.
- dekhn 3y agoYes, example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10418799/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10418799/ although I am not sure if T cells are considered stem cells or derived.
- colechristensen 3y agoYes, there are approved treatments that do exactly this with stem cells for some diseases.
- yread 3y agoyou can also collect cord blood just after birth of a baby. The blood contains stem cells that will be compatible with your baby and possibly other people in your family. Might be useful one day
- wolverine876 3y agoInduced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) were a major development by Shinya Yamanaka around 20 years ago. Essentially, you take an adult's cell and induce it to become a stem cell. I don't know much more about it but that certainly is part of the answer to your question. Hopefully others will chime in ...
- rafaelmn 3y agoAlso sounds like you could create a human clone embryo and harvest the stem cells. There are already surrogate pregnancy outsourcing places in poor parts of the world - if this is viable I expect this to become the new blood boy fad for the rich.
- CyberDildonics 3y agoEdmonds, of Desert Hot Springs, California, underwent a treatment in which he received stem cells with a rare genetic mutation that makes people who have it resistant to acquiring HIV. The stem cell transplant came from a donor with the rare homozygous CCR5 delta mutation.
- 23kfuhfsdf 3y ago[flagged]
- bsder 3y agoI salute him for going through a treatment that causes great personal pain and discomfort that probably only has marginal benefit for him but has huge benefits for those who come later. Would that we had many more people with that kind of selflessness.
- snakeyjake 3y agoIt is a poor physician who forecasts a prognosis based on a photograph.
- tasty_freeze 3y agoThe article says: > Edmonds received bone marrow and blood stem cells from the donor in 2019. The extra five years of life may be a nothing-burger to you, but to Edmonds and his family and friends, I'm sure it has slightly more meaning. Also, most people at 72 don't look entirely healthy and many have multiple health issues.
- mise_en_place 3y agoThanks for the diagnosis doc. What a bizarre comment.
- renewiltord 3y agoIndeed. A common question people have is "is being dead healthier than being alive but sick?" I suspect we may never know the answer to this. Science cannot find this truth.
- CyberDildonics 3y agoA common question people have is "is being dead healthier than being alive but sick?" You think this is a 'common question'?
- 3y ago
- FooBarWidget 3y agoAre these sorts of treatments available anywhere in Europe?
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoOn our underfunded government socialized healthcare systems? No way. Those who are minted go to the US or Switzerland for best cutting edge treatments and prosthetics.
- basisword 3y ago>> On our underfunded government socialized healthcare systems? No way. Those who are minted go to the US or Switzerland for best cutting edge treatments and prosthetics. Switzerland is a European country.
- ametrau 3y agoThey probably mean EU
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>Switzerland is a European country. Without the socialized healthcare system I was talking about.
- vidarh 3y agoOnly 5 patients worldwide has had this dual treatment so far, as far I understand - it's experimental. There's basically one clinic running tests on this specific treatment. Stem cell treatments for this kind of cancer, however, is on the UK NHS's list of treatments when the first line treatments do not get an optimal response, and from what I can see they've been in the guidelines since at least 2020. Given the NHS is one of the "cheapest" (as in stripped of cash by successive governments) socialized systems in Europe, if the NHS can afford it, lots of others can too. It's not the first choice for most patients because it is not suitable for everyone.
- 3y ago
- msie 3y agoStem cells seem to have this potential to cure so many things but we are somehow not there yet.
- s9df898r32h 3y agoAre there still laws in place that prohibit research using stem cells? That might not help
- Someone1234 3y agoMost of those only impact ESCs ("Embryonic") and not ASCs/iPSCs ("Adult"). There is plenty of research that can be conducted even in those places.
- kingofthehill98 3y agoSome highlights after reading the Wikipedia article on Stem cell controversy: - Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Portugal and Ireland do not allow the production of embryonic stem cell lines - The creation of embryonic stem cell lines is permitted in Finland, Greece, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom - Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, North Dakota and South Dakota have passed laws to "prohibit the creation or destruction of human embryos for medical research" - China has one of the most permissive human embryonic stem cell policies in the world. In the absence of a public controversy, human embryo stem cell research is supported by policies that allow the use of human embryos and therapeutic cloning. - The Catholic Church opposes human embryonic stem cell research calling it "an absolutely unacceptable act." The Church supports research that involves stem cells from adult tissues and the umbilical cord, as it "involves no harm to human beings at any state of development." - Islamic scholars generally favor the stance that scientific research and development of stem cells is allowed as long as it benefits society while causing the least amount of harm to the subjects.
- downrightmike 3y ago[flagged]
- Cass 3y agoThese sort of articles pop up every few months and make people hopeful for a cure, but this is sadly unlikely to ever be a viable one. Stem cell transplantation is a standard treatment for several blood cancers, but will almost certainly never be a standard HIV treatment for anyone except patients who need a transplantation anyway, for one single reason: with modern medicine, living with transplanted stem cells is significantly worse than living with HIV. With modern meds, HIV patients can have a normal life expectancy and live basically normal lives. You know how in traditional organ transplantation, your own immune cells will attack and often destroy the transplanted organ? In stem cell transplantation, your transplanted immune cells will attack every single organ in your body. Look up "graft versus host disease." After stem cell donation, most patients will have to take immuno-suppressants that a have significantly worse side effects than modern HIV meds do, often for the rest of their lives - and that's the lucky ones, where the meds will successfully treat the graft versus host disease. One of the more gruesome sights I've seen in my medical career was a lady with a severe graft versus host skin reaction that her doctors couldn't get under control despite massive doses of immuno-suppressants. Eventually large parts of her skin peeled off in strips, like something out of a horror movie. Then she died of pneumonia from the immuno-suppressants. This is an extreme example, of course, and many people live perfectly ordinary lives after stem cell transplantation, but the failure more is both more likely and more gruesome than the one for antiviral HIV treatment.
- corethree 3y ago[dead]
- voidpointercast 3y agoThis is correct. I have an extremely rare leukemia <1 in 100k, and as said above, the only cure is allogenic marrow transplant. To put it bluntly, survival is at best a 2/3 dice roll - and that's if you're diagnosed before 40. This is not something you're going to want for something as apparently treatable as HIV.
- ok_dad 3y agoI hope your die falls on one of the 2 good sides.
- golemiprague 3y ago[dead]