An advance in stem cell therapy for IBD

I found this pretty intriguing and exciting in a way.

Was looking for something else totally unrelated and stumbled on the article. Not sure if anyone else came across this before.

www.news-medical.net/news/20131018/New-study-paves-way-for-patient-specific-regenerative-therapies-for-inflammatory-bowel-diseases.aspx

Yeah - I didn't know that was an issue actually - cell continuing to grow into a tumor. Don't know much about stem cell/transplants. But I have read of a younger fellow in Collingwood (Ontario, Canada) that underwent this a few years ago for Crohn's with success I believe.

I guess in a few years we'll know... Always good to have something else aside from Biologics. I gotta say though, I'd be seriously nervous about being a trial or test phase patient. Geeze...

I never really thought about it till now - How grateful I am/we all should be to those that try these things... be it biologicals, or other meds as well. Not enough thanks goes out to them really.

just scanned the article to see how this differed from existing research with bone-marrow and adipose-tissue stem cells for IBD. my stem-cell knowledge is shaky, but if I understand these stem cells use colon tissue, and would be more similar to the prior research on adipose-tissue stem cells rather than bone-marrow.

anyway, these cells seem to repair crypt cells in mucosa rater than repairing immune system cells (like bone-marrow aka hemipotent stem cells do).

if I am following however, the idea is to take an individual's cells, induce the pluripotent stem cell status, and provide "patient specific" stem cell treatment. I think the current research, both bone-marrow and adipose tissue, use cells from many donors to make a non-patient-specific stem cell product (for example MULTISTEM).

anyway, I think the "advance" is the patient-specific dimension.