The Derby City Chapter of the National Spinal Cord Injury Association Network- Serving Kentuckiana.
Message From the President
Dear Members & Friends-
As of this writing, I have not yet scheduled a speaker for our August 17th meeting, but I am working on getting one scheduled. As usual, if we do not have a speaker, a video will be shown. Refreshments will be provided.
Our annual picnic, which will be in lieu of September’s meeting, will be held on September 17th at 12:00. See September’s issue for more details and directions to the picnic site.
October’s meeting will be held at Frazier Institute, 220 Abraham Flexnor Way, Louisville, in the 10th floor dining room at 6:30 p.m.
- David Allgood
From the Internet.– ed.
STUDY ESTABLISHES SAFETY OF SPINAL CORD STEM CELL TRANSPLANTATION
Transplanting human embryonic stem cells does not cause harm and can be used as a therapeutic strategy for the treatment of acute spinal cord injury, according to a recent study by UC Irvine researchers.
UCI neurobiologist Hans Keirstead and colleagues at the Reeve-Irvine Research Center found that rats with either mild or severe spinal cord injuries that were transplanted with a treatment derived from human embryonic stem cells suffered no visible injuries or ill effects as a result of the treatment itself. Furthermore, the study confirmed previous findings by Kierstead’s lab—since replicated by four other laboratories around the world—that replacing a cell type lost after injury improves the outcome after spinal cord injury in rodents. The findings are published in the current issue of Regenerative Medicine, published by Future Medicine.
“Establishing the safety of implanted embryonic stem cells is crucial before we can move forward with testing these treatments in clinical trials,” said Keirstead, an associate professor of anatomy and neurobiology and co-director of UCI’s Stem Cell Research Center. “We must always remember that a human clinical trial is an experiment and, going into it, we need to assure ourselves as best we can that the treatment will not cause harm. This study is an
