The Power of Hope
December 2, 2008 by Ian Clarke
I want to discuss the power of hope. I recently read an article in a national newspaper about a family who was traveling to China to receive stem cell therapy to restore their child’s vision. This child had been born blind as a result of a developmental defect that results in the optic nerve failing to develop normally. As a research scientist who studies brain stem cells and cancer stem cells, I was surprised to learn that hospitals in China were offering stem cell treatments to patients. The stem cells that generate the eye and optic nerve are very similar to the brain stem cells that I study. In this case, the first reports to suggest that this therapy may work came just within the last few years in studies on rats and mice.
When I did some further research I found that there were dozens of similar news stories from all across America and Canada where patients were leaving our healthcare systems to receive treatment in China, India, Mexico and the Caribbean just to name a few. Many of these companies were reporting stem cell treatments and cures for a wide range of diseases. What startled me the most is the thought that I may have missed the scientific literature that showed these treatments are effective. I was stunned to find out that in most cases there is no scientific studies to support these treatments. While there are a few promising new stem cell treatment already being used in humans, most are still at the early experimental stage. I was saddened to learn that in most cases the patients and parents are being charged large sums of money for these completely unproven, and in some cases completely untested, treatments. In almost every case there is no monitoring or public records allowing the scientific community to evaluate the effectiveness of these treatments.
This is where hope comes in. When patients and families have no effective treatments for debilitating or even fatal diseases, they want hope. They deserve hope. Unfortunately what they are often receiving is extortion. Hope can make us blind to logic and ignore evidence contrary to the outcome we desire. The way forward in science is to do carefully controlled experiments and careful clinical trials. No new treatment comes without potential risks, if someone tells you a treatment is “risk free” they are likely not telling you the whole truth. The question is of balancing potential risks with potential benefits, and this is where the idea of “informed consent” has derived from. In some cases the proposed treatments may actually cause more harm than the original disease, in other cases the treatments may be a breakthrough that saves the health and lives of many sick people. What is most important is that the process be evaluated on the scientific merits. We have seen several cases recently where drugs and treatments have been recalled after careful scientific scrutiny determined they did more harm than good. Many patients would have been harmed if this scientific process had not been allowed to take place.
Patients and families deserve hope, but they do not deserve to be lied to. I believe that the stem cell research we do will lead to groundbreaking new treatments for brain cancer, nerve repair, and degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s, but only if we can do proper science and clinical trials to further our knowledge in a responsible way. Stem cell research fills me with great hope for the future, but loathing for the few irresponsible people who would exploit that hope for personal gain at the expense of the patients who deserve the best we can give them.
Dr. Ian Clarke is research scientist in the lab of Dr. Peter Dirks at SickKids, a teacher at the Ontario College of Art and Design and a practicing artist.
Comments
One Response to “The Power of Hope”
Got something to say?
By using this site you agree to the Connecting for Kids terms of use. Click here to review the Terms of Use guidelines for this site.
Rett Syndrome and induced Pluripotent Stem cells goes “Green”
June 17, 2009 by Aaron Cheung
Stem cell researchers at The Hospital for Sick Children have now devised a method, reported in the scientific journal Nature Methods, that will facilitate the generation of induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells. I have previously blogged about the promise of iPS cells (see related articles). iPS cells are cells which have been reprogrammed from a differentiated somatic cell (such as your skin cells) to a pluripotent stem cell (like an embryonic stem cell, only that you don’t need to use embryos!). The generation of iPS cells is inherently very rare which occurs at a frequency of about 0.01% meaning you can generate about one iPS cell line out of hundred thousand cells. Out of which, many lines fail to satisfy the different rigorous tests necessary to be given the prestigious name of “iPS cell”.
A group led by Dr. James Ellis, and lead author Dr. Akitsu Hotta, at The Hospital for Sick Children has generated a reporter, named EOS, that will facilitate the generation of iPS cells for both mouse and human. The reporter has DNA elements (called promoters) that will drive the expression of a fluorescent protein (GFP) and an antibiotic resistance gene (puromycin) that will only turn on in pluripotent stem cells, but remain off in differentiated cells. Therefore, scientists can now generate iPS cells from different sources and the iPS cells will literally “light up with a green colour” once reprogramming has been achieved. Furthermore, by adding puromycin to your culture, it will keep the iPS cells in a pluripotent state as iPS cells will normally spontaneously differentiate.
To demonstrate the applicability of EOS, Ellis also derived iPS cells from patients who have a neurodevelopmental disorder called Rett Syndrome. Rett Syndrome is an Autism Spectrum Disorder which affects almost exclusively females at an incidence of 1 in 10,000 and is one of the leading causes of mental retardation in girls. These Rett Syndrome iPS cells were green when placed under a fluorescent microscope and Ellis demonstrated that neurons can be generated from these Rett Syndrome iPS cells, the cell type affected in Rett Syndrome.
In conclusion, the EOS reporter will facilitate the generation of iPS and will be particularly useful for new labs going into this rapidly developing field. Furthermore, Rett Syndrome iPS cells that were also generated in this study will be invaluable for future drug screens that may be beneficial to those with Rett Syndrome.
Article:
Hotta, A. et al. Isolation of human iPS cells using EOS lentiviral vectors to select for pluripotency. Nature Methods 6, 370–376 (2009).
Related articles:
Breakthrough of 2008 – Reprogramming
A New Era for Disease Modeling and Drug Screening
Some of our experts
Stem Cell Origins
Cancer stem cells
Stem Cells and the Nervous System
[...] more about these guildlines here and here. Also, have a look at Ian Clarke’s blog post from Monday about this very [...]