A team of researchers from Canada and the United States has taken an important step toward harnessing the healing power of menstrual blood.
They used stem cells isolated from the menstrual blood of two women and cloned by a San Diego company to save the legs of eight severely injured mice.
University of Western Ontario surgeon Hao Wang injected the menstrual stem cells into mice that had had the blood vessels to their legs blocked and the nerves tied. The mice that received the injection immediately after they were injured recovered, although two of them limped. But the legs of the mice in the control group turned black and fell off after 10 days, Dr. Wang said. All of the mice in the experiment were male.
The findings, reported yesterday in the Journal of Translational Medicine, are preliminary, but offer a glimpse into the potential of stem cells derived from menstrual blood in treating human patients, male and female.
Thomas Ichim, CEO of Medistem Laboratories, the company that cloned the stem cells, is hoping they will prove to be an effective treatment for both men and women with a condition known as critical limb ischemia - serious obstruction of arteries that leads to decreased blood flow to hands, legs and feet. The condition causes 150,000 amputations a year in the United States.
Dr. Ichim is keen to begin a small human trial if he can get approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and also hopes to investigate whether cells might also help people with multiple sclerosis and liver failure.
Dr. Ichim and one of the other authors of the paper, Neil Riordan, are both shareholders and managers at the publicly traded company. Dr. Wang and the other scientists are not shareholders. He says it is promising that the human stem cells worked so well in mice.
In the developing embryo, stem cells have an endless capacity for self-renewal and give rise to every type of cell in the body - skin, muscle, bone, heart, liver, kidney, brain and more than 250 other kinds of specialized cells. In adults, stem cells are far more rare, and provide the replacement cells to keep our bodies healthy and working well.
Scientists around the world are working to harness the regenerative power of stem cells to repair the human body.
Using embryonic stem cells is controversial because some come from aborted fetuses (some also come for umbilical cords). Many scientists are now trying to side step the ethical debate by reprogramming mature cells back to their embryonic state.
Getting stem cells from menstrual blood is another approach. The lining of the uterus is shed every month when a woman has her period. Research suggests the endometrium, or lining of the uterus, is rich in adult stem cells.
In 2007, researchers announced that cells taken from the menstrual blood of two women could be coaxed into becoming nine different types of cells, including muscle, nerve and bone.
It is those cells that Medistem Laboratories has cloned, Dr. Ichim said. The company calls them endometrial regenerative cells. The next step, said Dr. Wang, is to figure out exactly what these stem cells did to save the legs of the mice that had been injured.
It may be, Dr. Ichim said, that they produced growth factor that stimulated mouse stem cells to repair the damage.












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