Bone marrow stem cells treat skin, lung diseases
Aug. 12: In two groundbreaking studies published on Wednesday, doctors have used stem cells from bone marrow to help heal children with a killer skin disease, and to repair injured lungs.
Researchers led by University of Minnesota doctors, Dr John Wagner and Dr Jakub Tolar, used bone marrow stem cells to treat children with a rare genetic skin disorder called recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB).
The study was the first to show that bone marrow stem cells can be used to treat diseases affecting the skin and upper gastrointestinal tract, and alter the course of epidermolysis bullosa (EB), which causes skin to blister and scrape off with the slightest rub or bump — and for which there is no cure.
EB can also affect the lining of the mouth and esophagus, as well as the skin, and makes activities that many children take for granted, such as eating, painful. Seven children were enrolled in the trial which ran from 2007 to 2009. One child died before doctors could transplant healthy bone marrow stem cells, and another died six months after the transplant.
But the remaining five were all better, Dr Tolar said. “We have been able to show that they produce the all-important collagen 7 in their skin,” he said. Collagen 7, a protein that keeps layers of skin “glued” to each other and to the body, is missing in EB sufferers.
Although the children still have residual wounds on their skin, which means they have not been cured, the treatment had given them a new lease on life.
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