Embryonic stem cells: are useful in clinic treatments?
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MINI REVIEW
Embryonic stem cells: are useful in clinic treatments? Justo Aznar & Jose Luis Sánchez
Received: 21 June 2010 / Accepted: 3 December 2010 / Published online: 19 January 2011 # University of Navarra 2011
Abstract It is not uncommon to find statements in the social media and even in some scientific journals declaring that embryonic stem cells can be used in human medicine for therapeutic purposes. In our opinion, this statement does not fit the medical reality. To go into this subject in depth, and if possible to clarify it, we reviewed the most recent literature on clinical trials conducted with embryonic stem cells, concluding that up to the present time, there is only one ongoing clinical trial being carried out with these types of cells to treat a small group of patients with spinal cord injury. The results of this trial have still not been published. In conclusion, at present, there is only evidence of one phase I clinical trial conducted with embryonic stem cells, in comparison to the numerous trials conducted with adult stem cells. Keywords Embryonic stems cells . iPS cells . Adult stems cells . Clinical usefulness
A topic frequently debated in the specialised literature is whether embryonic stem cells have already been used for therapeutic purposes or whether there are at least ongoing clinical trials to this end.
J. Aznar (*) : J. Luis Sánchez Institute of Life Sciences, Catholic University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain e-mail: [email protected]
The stem cells to be used can be obtained from “spare” embryos from in vitro fertilisation or from embryos specifically created for such a purpose by somatic cell nuclear transfer, but deriving stem cell lines from embryos remains a very inefficient process, nearly 4% [20]. In the first case, i.e. if frozen embryos are used to obtain the corresponding stem cells, the therapeutic use of an allogenic material would probably result in the clinical problem of immunological rejection [4]. For this and other reasons, no clinical trials have been performed with derivations of human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) [12]. In the event that cell lines derived from embryos produced by somatic cell nuclear transfer are used, genetic material from the patient himself would have to be used to generate the corresponding zygote. In other words, a human being would have to be cloned. This does not appear to have been achieved up to now. Nevertheless, despite this, the social media continue to disseminate the therapeutic value of embryonic stem cells, to our mind with the subliminal intent of making their use more easily accepted by society. Given this social reality, we believe it would therefore be interesting to review the current medical literature on the clinical use of embryonic stem cells. In 2004, DA Prentice [17], in a report of the President’s Council on Bioethics, stated that at that time, there were already 57 applications throughout the world (compiled from a peer-reviewed article) which demonstrated improvements in human patients
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J. Aznar, J. Luis Sánch
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