Wow… Stem cells really are being used for something other than political bargaining chips…

A British research team led by the world’s leading heart surgeon has grown part of a human heart from stem cells for the first time. If animal trials scheduled for later this year prove successful, replacement tissue could be used in transplants for the hundreds of thousands of people suffering from heart disease within three years.

Sir Magdi Yacoub, a professor of cardiac surgery at Imperial College London, has worked on ways to tackle the shortage of donated hearts for transplant for more than a decade. His team at the heart science centre at Harefield hospital have grown tissue that works in the same way as the valves in human hearts, a significant step towards the goal of growing whole replacement hearts from stem cells.

That’s some fascinating stuff, and it all but eliminates the worries about organ rejection and other complications. The most interesting part of the article, though, comes waaaaaaaaaaay down toward the bottom, and it’s probably the part that many in the US would rather you didn’t see at all…

By using chemical and physical nudges, the scientists first coaxed stem cells extracted from bone marrow to grow into heart valve cells. By placing these cells into scaffolds made of collagen, Dr Chester and his colleague Patricia Taylor then grew small 3cm-wide discs of heart valve tissue. Later this year, that tissue will be implanted into animals - probably sheep or pigs - and monitored to see how well it works as part of a circulatory system.

If that trial works well, Prof Yacoub is optimistic that the replacement heart tissue, which can be grown into the shape of a human heart valve using specially-designed collagen scaffolds, could be used in patients within three to five years.

Growing a suitably-sized piece of tissue from a patient’s own stem cells would take around a month but he said that most people would not need such individualised treatment. A store of ready-grown tissue made from a wide variety of stem cells could provide good matches for the majority of the population.

Extracted from bone marrow?

You mean adult bone marrow?

Maybe if people weren’t so obsessed with their paralyzed friend, their cancer-riddled wife, or slaughtering embryos in the name of “science” we could make the medical advances we keep hearing about. Instead, stem cells are a bargaining chip and a political talking point.

As a reminder, stem cell research of all kinds is 100% legal in the United States. Embryonic stem cell research is not federally funded but is 100% legal. There are numerous lines of cells that are not being used. Adult stem cell research is 100% legal and federally funded, and it’s the research that made stories like the one above possible.

Now if we could get over all the fingerpointing and such, maybe we could use the laws we have, the research we’re allowed to do and the funding any scientist can get to do the work other scientists are already doing.

Or we could just harp on how we aren’t doing enough simply because we don’t allow embryos to be produced as vegetables fit for harvesting. Let’s just understand that the reason things aren’t progressing isn’t because the government isn’t handing out blank checks to embryonic stem cell researchers; it’s because we’re too caught up in the politics to actually work on the science.

That’s not opinion. It’s obvious demonstrable fact.

via The Guardian

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