Can cord blood stem cells repair damage to the Central Nervous System?

Answer: Probably. In the lab, Stem Cells from umbilical Cord Blood can be induced to develop into nerve cells. When neural cells derived from blood Stem Cells are transplanted into lab mice, the cells have been shown to survive and function. The hope is that, eventually, there will be established procedures to infuse Cord Blood into human beings, get the Stem Cells to turn into nerve cells, and have those nerve cells function in the body to fix the patient’s problem.

Disorders of the Central Nervous System (CNS) which might be treated with Stem Cells:

• degenerative diseases: Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Multiple Sclerosis
• traumatic damage: post-stroke, spinal cord injuries
• hereditary diseases: Huntington’s, Leukodystrophies

The page on diseases Treated by Blood Stem Cells sorts CNS diseases according to whether they are in a very experimental stage of research or are undergoing clinical trials with human patients. Also, the News Page chronicles some miraculous cures claimed with Cord Blood infusions (for example, see the entries for Dec 2004). Research Report: Multiple Sclerosis Stem cell transplants as a therapy for Multiple Sclerosis have been in clinical trial for several years. These trials are using autologous stem cells from the patient, not cord blood. The transplants seem to have slowed the progression of MS in some patients. But the transplant itself carries a significant risk of mortality, about 10%, and thus was only tested in patients with severe MS who were not responding to other treatments. References:

• press release 4/16/2002 from the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting.
• Nash RA, et al. 5/22/2003 Blood. A team led by George Kraft of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA, tried autologous stem cell transplants on 26 MS patients, followed over a period of three years.
• Fassas A, et al. 8/2002, J Neurol. 249(8):1088-97. Researchers in Italy and Greece performed a retrospective study of stem cell transplants in 85 MS patients.

Research Report: Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS; or “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”) Cord blood transplants as a therapy for ALS are currently in clinical trial. The ALS Therapy Development Foundation issued a review of “Human Umbilical Cord Blood Therapies in ALS” in Dec. 2002, followed by an update on cord blood; subsequently the Muscular Dystrophy Association opened a clinical trial of cord blood transplant for ALS in 2003. Research Report: Alzheimer’s Disease In July 2003, the NIH granted $1.4 million over 5 years for research on the conversion of stem cells into neurons. The grant went to the CSO of NewNeural, a privately-held biotech company founded by Dr. Kiminobu Sugaya and two other colleagues; their research works with stem cells from adult bone marrow. In Feb 2005, the University of Central Florida issued a press release that Sugaya’s lab, together with colleagues the University of Illinois at Chicago, are the first to demonstrate improved memory in adult animals after transplanting neural stem cells into their brains. The NewNeural team achieved the results by treating bone marrow cells in laboratory cultures with bromodeoxyuridine, a compound that becomes part of DNA, and made adult human stem cells more likely to develop as brain cells after they were implanted in adult rat brains. Research Report: Stroke While the news media are reporting miraculous cures that supposedly occured in far-away lands, in the published medical literature the use of stem cells to treat stroke has not advanced beyond mice. Reference:

• Borlongan CV, Hadman M, Sanberg CD, Sanberg PR 2004: Stroke. 35(10):2385-9 “Central nervous system entry of peripherally injected umbilical cord blood cells is not required for neuroprotection in stroke.” In this study, cord blood stem cells were given intravenously to mice after stroke, together with a drug to help the cells permeate the blood-brain-barrier. Stroke size was dramatically reduced by 40%, and long-term disability was also significantly reduced.