Meningitis damage repaired with adult stem cells

A 20 year old young man from Bedford, Texas was about to lose his arms and legs due to the clotting of blood in his vessels caused by meningitis but no longer.

The treatment involved doctors and technicians at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Florida, Israel and the Dominican Republic, and one aunt with a computer search.

(While it's wonderful that this young man was rescued, I can't help but wonder how many other experiments are going on in other countries, led by US doctors. Remember that Dr. Wilkerson of Houston did his first experiments using adult stem cells in Brazil.)

From the Fort Worth Star Telegram (Free subscription required):

Lampkin's medical odyssey has taken him from his home in Bedford to a hospital in an island country for a treatment the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved.

Sudden onset
It began when Lampkin, a freshman attending Cisco Junior College on an athletic scholarship, returned home for spring break.

That Friday he was fine. But on Saturday while visiting friends, he complained of having a headache and went to bed early, said Michelle Gideon, Lampkin's godmother.

The next morning -- Easter Sunday -- she found him lying on a bedroom floor.

"One side of his face looked totally normal, but the other side was swollen and looked like he had chickenpox," she recalled.

Lampkin was rushed to Harris Methodist H.E.B. Hospital, where he was treated for bacterial meningitis. Those chickenpoxlike spots were signs of clots cutting off blood flow.

Antibiotics helped stabilize Lampkin, who was transferred to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas.

There doctors planned to amputate his legs at the knees and his arms at the elbows.

But an aunt searched the Internet for other treatments and found Grekos, who was using adult stem cells to stimulate tissue regrowth, improve circulation and reduce diabetic amputation rates. Grekos, director of cardiology and vascular disease at Regenocyte Therapeutic in Florida, flew to Dallas to escort Lampkin and his mother to the facility.

"If there was any hope of helping this young man we wanted to offer it," he said.

Once Lampkin was in Florida, his blood was drawn and sent to a lab in Israel.

Although it was Passover and the lab staffers were on vacation, they agreed to process the blood, Grekos said. The cells were then replicated into millions of super cells that Grekos' company has branded "Renocytes." The cells can become almost any type of new cell or tissue, he said.

MIT adult stem cell research soap opera?

Yesterday's Massachusetts Institute of Technology press release ("MIT bioengineer advances survival, promise of adult stem cells")led to the story behind the story and and maybe more.

Behind them all, of course is the truth that human embryos are, indeed human, and that there is not any difference between the embryo in the petri dish and the one that each of us once was.

The February 27, 2007 Press Release concerns an article published on line in the January 18, 2007 online edition of Stem Cell Express Online. The Abstract is available here. According to the website, the paper, "Tethered EGF Provides a Survival Advantage to Mesenchymal Stem Cells" was submitted last year, on May 26, 2006 and accepted for publication January 9, 2007. The research supports that stem cells develop in reaction to and influenced by their environment and details a way to manipulate the growth factor EGF on an implanted scaffolding to encourage bone marrow mesenchymal cells to develop bone and encourage healing after surgery or severe wounds.

Linda G. Griffith, Ph. D., leads the Griffith Lab at MIT, which focuses on bioengineered tissue, using adult stem cells. In fact, the MIT press release and the Science Daily adaptation both mention that Dr. Griffith has a personal interest in preferring to avoid research on embryonic stem cells.

Griffith, who does not work with human embryonic stem cells, believes that adult stem cells offer promising therapeutic possibilities.

"I'm very optimistic about the potential for adult stem cells to be useful clinically for the problems I work on, since there are already some clinical successes based on these cells" she said. "Continuing, careful, methodical work will lead to improved therapies based on adult stem cells. We are aiming to expand the range of therapies that work in the clinic." Griffith is one of several MIT biological engineering faculty members who work with adult stem cells but not human embryonic stem cells.

Griffith is also one among many scientists around the world who have at least some objections to creation of human embryonic stem cells, for a variety of reasons. She says her current focus on adult stem cells is driven largely by the interesting science and the feasibility for near-term clinical use for the types of cells she investigates. However, she also avoids research with human embryonic stem cells following a personal experience with in vitro fertilization almost 10 years ago.

"Like some other scientists I know, my personal views about creating human ES cell lines changed when confronted with the reality of doing so from my own embryos. After this experience, I was not comfortable conducting human ES cell research myself, and I have a better understanding of why some scientists object to all work with human ES cells," she said. She also said she feels her personal views, and those of others, are respected in the scientific community.

Currently, federally funded research is only allowed on certain established lines of embryonic stem cells, although a few states, including California and Connecticut, offer state funding for broader embryonic stem cell research. There are no legal restrictions on funding to study adult stem cells.

These quotes are exactly what so many of us have been saying all along. I certainly intend to use them in any testimony I give in the future, although I wish there were not quite so much stress on the theme of "personal views." I don't see much room for personal views in whether or not the embryos who are her children and those who other researchers would disaggregate for stem cells.

What's the story behind the story? We may never know all of it. But here's just a bit from an article on the MIT website about the hunger strike of Dr. James Sherley which was also covered here earlier this month:

Additionally, Sherley also outlined his main reasons for complaint, which included denial of independent lab space by then Provost Robert Brown and the conflict of interest that resulted from the spousal relationship between Lauffenburger and BE Professor Linda G. Griffith led him to believe his case for tenure was not handled fairly.

Healing wounds and regrowing tissue

Doctors at the Brooks Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas take care of soldiers (and sometimes civilians) who have been severely wounded or burned. I did 3 or 4 rotations at the old BAMC during medical school and residency and I was always impressed with the enthusiasm and care for the patients that all the staff and doctors displayed. The Burn Center at that hospital has always been on the cutting edge. And, now the BAMC docs are leading, again.

We've used special powders and cloths or tissues to speed wound healing or to give wounds more strength while the tissues grow back. There's a wound treatment that seems to encourage the growth of healthy tissue rather than scar tissue.

First, a little about the healing process. Think of the repairing cells as a crew that works best under water. The body first covers the wound to keep out infection and to provide a scaffold for the new tissues to grow on. The immediate repair is replaced over a couple months' time after the first healing. The workers that build the scaffold that the new skin will grow on need to swim into place. The new skin cells themselves - actually the stem cells that divide and develop into the new skins - must swim in. That's probably one reason that wounds which are dressed with wet coverings or an ointment that holds in the body's tissues heal so much faster.

The powder or tissue, ACell Powder Wound Dressing, is approved for use in wounds as a scaffold or matrix for the new skin to grow on. It appears that in some cases, the wounds grow back better, with more normal tissue and less scarring than in wounds without the powder.
The plan is to try the substance on men who have had their fingers amputated, leaving no tissue appendages that allow us all to grasp a pencil or a fork, to close buttons or a zipper. The hope is that even the smallest improvement will allow grasping.