Long before President George G.W. Bush approved federal funding for researchers using government-approved embryonic stem cell lines in 2001, doctors were already using adult stem cells in hospitals.
Since the 1960s, doctors have been using stem cells from bone marrow to treat blood disorders, said Paula Turpen, the director of research resources at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
With research hotspots growing abroad, UNMC researchers have benefited from federal funding that has allowed them to study how stem cells can treat various diseases.
The National Institute of Health defines a stem cell as a pluripotent cell that can give rise to any type of cell in the body except those needed to develop a fetus. NIH defined stem cell lines as cell cultures that can be grown indefinitely in a laboratory created from stem cells removed from an embryo.
Last year two UNMC research teams received training on how to use stem cell lines from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of California at San Francisco and were allowed to keep some lines for their own research.
Researchers at UNMC are currently working with stem cells to treat a variety of diseases, Turpen said. Stem cells are used to:
n Isolate healthy insulin producing cells to treat diabetes.
n Isolate lung cells to treat lung diseases.
n Generate healthy neurons to treat paralysis disorders.
Research must go through three clinical stages before a treatment is eligible to apply for approval by the Food and Drug Administration, Turpen said.
During the first phase, a small amount of patients are tested with a drug, with safety as the main concern. During the second phase, the drug is tested for effectiveness in hundreds of patients, and in the third phase, the drug may be tested in several thousand patients to check for adverse reactions, side effects and benefits.
Scientists generally don't set timelines on their research, Turpen said, because they're usually in the beginning stages of research.
Government funding for research isn't the only divisive issue proponents worry about.
In an e-mail to the Daily Nebraskan, Chip Maxwell, the executive director of the Nebraska Coalition for Ethical Research, said while he is against any research that harms a human embryo, he said he could see the need for cloning in embryonic stem cell research.
The process, known as therapeutic cloning, allows the creation of cloned embryos from which stem cells are harvested.
When a person's own stem cells aren't used for treatment, Maxwell said, the body rejects the cells because they don't have the same genetic code.
"So we'll clone you and make an embryo with your genetic code," Maxwell said. "We'll take stem cells from your clone-embryo, and your body will accept them because they have your genetic code."
This method is popularly used to treat diseases in parts of the body that aren't closely monitored by the immune system.
Stem cell research held a lot of promising news for various diseases, Turpen said.
She said children suffering from Barton's disease, a fetal pediatric disease, should look forward to news on a clinical trial for a possible treatment on the disease.
The key to stem cell research revolves around understanding, she said.
"The more we can understand the development (of stem cells)," Turpen said, "the more opportunities we have to benefit society."
