FDA approves human embrionic stem cell research

I think it is great!

Now they can move on with more research!

Great news.
 
About time! I am happy and hope this will help deaf people to became hear again.
 
That's great! Hope they find cures for all the diseases.
 
Would be interesting, if say 20 years from now they made nanomachines fully usable and just give 'em to you by the injection of a needle, and these repair or substitute over damaged human organs and functions.

This stem cell research approval might have been a few baby steps that re-opened the gates for future attempts of research.

But yeah, agreed that you aren't gonna lose your job that soon..
Maybe 10+ ~20 years seems safer to say if you're in an area related to it, in a sense that that service or product becomes no longer required.
 
Well if the stem cells ends up curing deafness.

The CI will not be the hot debate anymore.

Stem celling your child will be!! I can see it already. :lol:
 
Well if the stem cells ends up curing deafness.

The CI will not be the hot debate anymore.

Stem celling your child will be!! I can see it already. :lol:

LOL, yeah, but hey thats how the world revolves, with difference of opinion. How boring of world would it be if everyone had same interests and nothing to debate over.
 
LOL, yeah, but hey thats how the world revolves, with difference of opinion. How boring of world would it be if everyone had same interests and nothing to debate over.

It is all about how the world revolve and evolves. :)
 
CNN.com states there is a guy who had lukemia and had HIV and now that he had stem cell transfusion, the HIV appears to be gone.

LINK
Man appears free of HIV after stem cell transplant - CNN.com
42-year-old HIV patient with leukemia appears to have no detectable HIV in his blood and no symptoms after a stem cell transplant from a donor carrying a gene mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS, according to a report published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.


The patient underwent a stem cell transplant and since, has not tested positive for HIV in his blood.

"The patient is fine," said Dr. Gero Hutter of Charite Universitatsmedizin Berlin in Germany. "Today, two years after his transplantation, he is still without any signs of HIV disease and without antiretroviral medication."

The case was first reported in November, and the new report is the first official publication of the case in a medical journal. Hutter and a team of medical professionals performed the stem cell transplant on the patient, an American living in Germany, to treat the man's leukemia, not the HIV itself.

However, the team deliberately chose a compatible donor who has a naturally occurring gene mutation that confers resistance to HIV. The mutation cripples a receptor known as CCR5, which is normally found on the surface of T cells, the type of immune system cells attacked by HIV.

The mutation is known as CCR5 delta32 and is found in 1 percent to 3 percent of white populations of European descent.

HIV uses the CCR5 as a co-receptor (in addition to CD4 receptors) to latch on to and ultimately destroy immune system cells. Since the virus can't gain a foothold on cells that lack CCR5, people who have the mutation have natural protection. (There are other, less common HIV strains that use different co-receptors.)

People who inherit one copy of CCR5 delta32 take longer to get sick or develop AIDS if infected with HIV. People with two copies (one from each parent) may not become infected at all. The stem cell donor had two copies.

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While promising, the treatment is unlikely to help the vast majority of people infected with HIV, said Dr. Jay Levy, a professor at the University of California San Francisco, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study. A stem cell transplant is too extreme and too dangerous to be used as a routine treatment, he said.

"About a third of the people die [during such transplants], so it's just too much of a risk," Levy said. To perform a stem cell transplant, doctors intentionally destroy a patient's immune system, leaving the patient vulnerable to infection, and then reintroduce a donor's stem cells (which are from either bone marrow or blood) in an effort to establish a new, healthy immune system.

Levy also said it's unlikely that the transplant truly cured the patient in this study. HIV can infect many other types of cells and may be hiding out in the patient's body to resurface at a later time, he said.

"This type of virus can infect macrophages (another type of white blood cell that expresses CCR5) and other cells, like the brain cells, and it could live a lifetime. But if it can't spread, you never see it-- but it's there and it could do some damage," he said. "It's not the kind of approach that you could say, 'I've cured you.' I've eliminated the virus from your body." Health.com: 10 questions to ask a new partner before having sex

Before undergoing the transplant, the patient was also found to be infected with low levels of a type of HIV known as X4, which does not use the CCR5 receptor to infect cells. So it would seem that this virus would still be able to grow and damage immune cells in his body. However, following the transplant, signs of leukemia and HIV were absent.

"There is no really conclusive explanation why we didn't observe any rebound of HIV," Hutter said. "This finding is very surprising."

Hutter noted that one year ago, the patient had a relapse of leukemia and a second transplant from the same donor. The patient experienced complications from the procedure, including temporary liver problems and kidney failure, but they were not unusual and may occur in HIV-negative patients, he said.

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Researchers including Hutter agree that the technique should not be used to treat HIV alone. "Some people may say, 'I want to do it,'" said Levy. A more logical -- and potentially safer -- approach would be to develop some type of CCR5-disabling gene therapy or treatment that could be directly injected into the body, said Levy.

Less invasive options to alter CCR5 could be on the horizon within the next five years, said Levy. "It's definitely the wave of the future," he said. "As we continue to follow this one patient, we will learn a lot."

One drug that's currently on the market that blocks CCR5 is called maraviroc (Selzentry). It was first approved in 2007 and is used in combination with other antiretroviral drugs. Health.com: Who's most at risk for STDs?

In 2007, an estimated 2 million people died from AIDS, and 2.7 million people contracted HIV. More than 15 million women are infected worldwide. HIV/AIDS can be transmitted through sexual intercourse, sharing needles, pregnancy, breast-feeding, and/or blood transfusions with an infected person. Health.com:What should I do if the condom breaks?

"For HIV patients, this report is an important flicker of hope that antiretroviral therapy like HAART [highly active antiretroviral therapy] is not the endpoint of medical research," Hutter said.
 
Stem cell technology is STILL a LOOOOONG way to go for deafness or other non-life threatening disorders. It's still in its infancy and there's already studies showing that stem cell can cause cancer in some patients recieving it and they're convinced its from stem cells since those cancers they found were not typical. It may be helpful for those who have terminal illnesses as they may prolong their lifespan but the risks may not be worth it for treating diseases that are not life threatening.

I do not expect stem cell cure for deafness for another 20 years and I also think it's more likely that implants will become more refined and more "biological" thus will keep implant companies stay in business.
 
About time! I am happy and hope this will help deaf people to became hear again.

How ? I know it may help for spinal cord patients who suffered, but deaf ? I couldn't figure it out. :lol:

I guess, I need help to understand this. lol
 
How ? I know it may help for spinal cord patients who suffered, but deaf ? I couldn't figure it out. :lol:

I guess, I need help to understand this. lol

exactly the same way it helps for spinal cord patients. Spinal Cord and Deaf = nerve problem. Stem cell = solution for damaged nerves. You replace those nerves, the person's fixed.

Remember about woman who has to go thru facial transplant because of Travis the Chimp? Her eyes are gone because you cannot simply reattach nerves to eyes. It doesn't work like that.

I'll explain - right now, we can make person with one leg walk by providing robotic prosthetic leg. We can make people hear with CI/HA. We can help AIDS/HIV patients live longer with cocktail drugs. But there's one thing we can't - to repair the nerve. With stem cell - you definitely can and another possible thing about stem cell research is that you MAY be able to regenerate an organ - that means no more waiting for organ transplant. that is amazing.
 
exactly the same way it helps for spinal cord patients. Spinal Cord and Deaf = nerve problem. Stem cell = solution for damaged nerves. You replace those nerves, the person's fixed.

Remember about woman who has to go thru facial transplant because of Travis the Chimp? Her eyes are gone because you cannot simply reattach nerves to eyes. It doesn't work like that.

I'll explain - right now, we can make person with one leg walk by providing robotic prosthetic leg. We can make people hear with CI/HA. We can help AIDS/HIV patients live longer with cocktail drugs. But there's one thing we can't - to repair the nerve. With stem cell - you definitely can and another possible thing about stem cell research is that you MAY be able to regenerate an organ - that means no more waiting for organ transplant. that is amazing.

Ah, with that -- I understand now. Think it is goin' to cost alot of money just to have a nerve replacement ? I mean, look at what you just have explained about prosthetic leg, CI/HA, cocktail drugs and all that -- don't cost much, but to have a nerve replacement... will it cost alot more than what we have today such as prosthetic leg, CI/HA, cocktail drugs and so forth ? I am not sure, if people could afford it. Think ANY kind of insurance will cover it ?
 
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