Before stem cell therapies become mainstream, several hurdles must be overcome. One challenge is developing air-tight approaches to assure that stem cell transplantation does not give rise to tumors. Another is finding safe ways to induce pluripotency in adult stem cells, which can then be used for transplantation. In Bedside to Bench, Evan Snyder and Rahul Jandial discuss the risks of tumorigenesis in stem cell therapies, and, in Bench to Bedside, Laura Clarke and Derek van der Kooy examine new ways to induce pluripotency.
One month after the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first clinical trial of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) (for spinal cord injury), a study appeared1 reporting tumors in the brain and spinal cord of a child who had received intracranial and intrathecal injections of what were purported to be neural stem cells (NSCs). The child had traveled to Moscow to receive an 'experimental therapy' for ataxia telangiectasia, a rare, incurable neurodegenerative condition.
REFERENCE: http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v15/n9/full/nm0909-999.html
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