When did you hear about stem cells for the first time? Probably more than 20 years ago, in the first ten years of this century. It was the moment when many spoke of it as the panacea for all evils. It was the time of stamina and Vannoni, hopes sold to desperate patientstravel in the scaming clinics of post-Soviet and Caribbean countries.
It was also the moment in which there was an ideological contrast between the Church, which never as follows scientific issues, supporting (also economically) research on phantom stem cells present in adult bodies, e the scientific community, which focused its cards on the stem cells derived from the embryos. Me The adult stem cells exist only for skin, horny and blood, but not for the other organs, while working on the stem cells of the embryo is complicated and the results were far to arrive. Thus the emphasis on stem cells has gradually dampened.
Ma The research did not stop instead. And, finally, the news arrives on the New England Journal of Medicine of what perhaps it is The first concrete success of stem embryonic cells: 10 patients with type I diabetes have been treated with the infusion of beta pancreas cells (those that produce insulin) obtained in the laboratory starting from human embryonic stem cells. It is the first historical goal achieved with this technology.
The existence of stem cells in the mouse embryos had already been described in 1981 by Martin Evans, An English biologist from Cambridge, in the United Kingdom. It took over 15 years before an American laboratory in 1997 showed how these cells also exist in human embryos.
Generating an embryo with in vitro fertilization and disrupting its cells after 3-4 days cells that proliferate without interruption are obtainedwhile maintaining the ability to specialize in any of the 240 different cell types that make up our body – red blood cells, neurons, liver cells are examples of these types of specialized cells.
The specialized cells, therefore, are injected directly into patients to restore the function of an lost organ. All very exciting in principle, but not easy to make. Some experiments are at the beginning failedfor example to regenerate the spinal cord in paralyzed patients for a trauma to the spine: it is relatively easy to obtain new laboratory neurons in stem cells, but much more difficult to convince these neurons, once implanted in patients, to reach the muscles they should innervate, many tens of centimeters from the spinal cord. Simpler, however, regenerate the cells that do not require integration within a specific body to work, such as Beta cells that produce insulinalso active outside the pancreas.
One of the pioneers in the regeneration of beta cells is Doug Meltona professor of Harvard. In 2015, Melton founded Cambridge, Massachusetts, a start-up, Semma Therapeutics, that 4 years later it was purchased for 950 million dollars in cash by one of the most visionary American biotech, Vertex Pharmaceuticalthis also by Cambridge. And it is now Vertex to communicate success: 10 of the 12 diabetic patients treated with the infusion of 800 million beta cells in the door vein (the vein that brings blood to the liver from the intestine) after a year no longer need insulin injections and They are therefore virtually treated by diabetes.
Three latest reflections of this story. The first is that, as always, you have to be cautious: The patients treated are still few. Therapy, called zimislecelis already currently experimented in a more extensive way in North America and Europe. If the experimentation is positive, Vertex will seek approval by the regulatory authorities in 2026.
The second is that There are still margins of improvement. Patients transplanted with vetex beta cells must be treated for life with immunosuppressive drugs, as for an organ transplant. In 2006, Yamanaka showed how it is possible to virtually transform any cell into a stem embryonic cell.
In the future, therefore, the therapy could be conducted starting directly from the patient’s cells, without the need for immunosuppression. The third reflection is that This would not have been possible in Italy, Because research on human stem cell cells is prohibited by an obtuse and old law, imposed in 2004. –
