Scientific research and progress is something I have always been interested in. Research in the medical field is particularly interesting to me as I work in oncology, and part of that, stem cell research is a fascinating and dynamic area that has the potential to change medicine in our lifetime.
Despite the existence of hundreds of stem cell clinics, the scientific community is just taking the first cautious steps in human clinical trials involving stem cell therapy. This is fully justified, as there is growing evidence of the dangerous potential side effects of the unscientific and unregulated administration of stem cell treatments.
This paper will examine the initial steps taken by researchers in Japan and the US in studies involving human
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All three women “paid $5,000 each to receive injections of solutions that supposedly contained stem cells that were obtained from fat removed from their abdomens through liposuction” (Stein, 2017), and were all blinded as a consequence of the treatment they received. By contrast, Stein also described a similar case of an elderly woman who received stem cell treatment for macular degeneration with iPSC (Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells), stem cells derived from adult skin cells, as part of a very carefully designed clinical trial. The patient, treated in Japan, only had one eye treated initially, a precaution the scientists took in case the therapy would not work as anticipated. This was the first patient in the world to receive iPSC treatment as part of a clinical study, and the team stopped the trial “because they discovered worrisome genetic variations in the RPE cells they had produced for the second patient” (Stein, 2017, para 27). George Daily, dean and stem cell researcher at Harvard Medical School, who Stein interviewed for the NPR story, stressed the importance of the cautious approach the Japanese team took to administering the treatment. (Stein,