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The UK's NHS Blood and Transplant has announced plans to set up a "stem cell factory" in Liverpool in order to treat diabetes patients with experimental therapy:
NHS Blood and Transplant wants to make and give the experimental therapy to patients at high risk of developing diabetes-related kidney problems. It is hoped the injections will slow down or stop tissue damage, removing the need for dialysis or transplants. Diabetes is the most common cause of end stage kidney disease, which kills around 40,000 people a year in the UK.
The 48 patients taking part in the study will be treated at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and Belfast Health and Social Care Trust or at another trial site in Italy. The injection of cells they will receive are called stromal cells and they are grown from donated human bone marrow.
[...] In animal studies, stromal cell injections have provided measurable improvements in kidney function and it is hoped they will do the same in people. Only some of the patients in the study will get the real jab (at different doses). The others will get a dummy injection. This will let the investigators check whether the treatment really works and if it has any side effects.
From the announcement:
The first training runs for stem cell production in Liverpool are due to start this month, October. The first treatments are due in 2016. [...] The research project, called NEPHSTROM, is led by the National University of Ireland, Galway, and Orbsen Therapeutics, an NUI Galway spin out company. The project has been funded with six million Euros from the European Union Horizon 2020 programme.
[...] Professor Giuseppe Remuzzi, from the Istituto Di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri in Italy will lead the clinical trial across the four centres. He said: "The clinical experience with stromal cells is still in its infancy, mainly focused on developing novel therapeutic solutions for patients with bone marrow or organ transplantation as well as for those with a small number of autoimmune diseases. NEPHSTROM is a small but intensively studied clinical trial which will allow determination of the effective dose, and how they might function to protect the diabetic kidney."
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Dunbal on Tuesday October 20 2015, @09:17PM
We don't need no stinking ethics committee we're the NHS!
Well when things go wrong I guess they can always fall back on "The clinical experience with stromal cells is still in its infancy". Your kidneys are working better, sorry we gave you cancer. I just hope the patients are given excellent informed consent (and no, not just a form full of legalese to sign), as well as compensated for their participation.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday October 20 2015, @09:36PM
Oh for fuck's sake. There's always risks in clinical trials. Patients are always informed about the known risks and the possibility of unknown risks. They're always backed with animal trials that suggested low risk of side effects compared to efficacy and literally years of prior review.
Might as well just say "Please don't ever do research to save lives because I'm scared of unspecified problems."
Jesus christ, go live in a cave and treat your diabetes with liverwort.