Stem cells application´s progress in action

In spite of the fact that many countries are having trouble defining the legal use of stem cells and prohibit some crucial applications of them, a new technique was recently experimented with at the Spire Hospital in Southampton, United Kingdom.

One of the first operations was done on a 39 y.o male suffering from a bone disease that caused him pain on movement. Actually the new method of performance would comply with many legal restrictions connected to embryonic cells whose use has been completely avoided by exploiting stem cells from bone marrow extracted by the surgeons from donors´ pelvis. On top of that any possible prothesis rejections or the issue itself of looking for and waiting for a compatible donor would be avoided by taking the bone marrow from the patient’s body.

Actually the donated bones are degraded pieces taken from patients who needed and were already provided of a joint replacement. That means that side effects would stay for those donors.

Following the stem cell extraction the surgeons purified the stem cells and mixed them with cleaned bone from a donor who had already had the bone replaced. Finally the dead tissue, a consequence of the disease, was removed and the cavity was filled with the mixture. Subsequently the stem cells are to generate new tissue by themselves and to drive the formation of new blood vessels in order to bring in nutrients which guarantee the cells’ survival and growth.

As a next step doctors are aiming to improve the technique with the application of an artificial chemical material supporting the stem cells’ growth. The benefit of that would be using this material in place of the donated human bones, and prevent the use of joint replacements even for those patients. Some of the most unpleasant side effects of the current prothesis are in fact the device substitution occurring repeatedly through the patient’s life and a possible rejection or slipping after the operation, which means new distressing operations, a prolonging of the treatment and last but not least a considerable worsening of the patient’s life quality.

As soon as the next goal is pursued all of those temporary measures will be over. Eventually as a very positive consequence of this new procedure and its forecast enhancement, the treatment time would be considerably shortened and on top of that the time wasted in waiting for a donor to be available would be completely eliminated.

Anyway the new procedure has to show long term results before its full operation is confirmed. That day when potential good results are verified, its use could open the way to a complete replacement of prothesis and any artificial devices apt to substitute human joints.

On the other hand to provide evidence of the first new procedure successes, a patient operated on one year ago can already say that he can walk normally and without pain. Only one failure has resulted from six patients operated on so far, thus the future is going to provide a high percentage of cases having a positive outcome to be really satisfied about, that will improve patient life quality, an aspect of the utmost importance in disease treatments.

Whereas ethical issues would be prevented from being further discussed, new obstacles would be raised by multinationals operating in that trade, that could drive public opinion against the innovation and could consequently influence global expenditure in order to enable their business the survival of, or even boost, their business.

However, the life quality improvement due to the new technique is going to result in a positive social impact which is at the base of any discovery’s fulfillment and propagation. In other words people´s needs and strengths would be the decisive factors that could quickly drive many of the above mentioned businesses out of the market.

It is highly likely that those companies would soon be advised to rethink their products and possibly replace them with an active support to methods involving the utilization of stem cells. For instance, the production of artificial material nurturing the stem cells, whose employment doctors are going to set up in the near future, could early become one of the key products of a potential new growing market.