Australian researchers have just found a way to use stem cells to reduce injury and scarring in the lung and even generate new lung cells.

Lead researcher, associated professor Yuben Moodley from the University of Western Australia, said the investigation could provide hope for patients suffering from lung damage.

In Australia, one in four are affected by serious lung conditions. Globally, lung diseases cause many deaths and disabilities, with most lung conditions responding poorly to traditional medicines. “Cellular therapies, although in the early stages of development, may form a vital part of future life-saving treatments.” Moodley said. 

Three more Kiwi children are set to benefit from a cord blood lung study currently underway in Melbourne.

Led by Professor Bob Williamson at the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Medicine, the study is using umbilical cord blood to treat Cystic Fibrosis an inherited disease in which a thick mucus clogs the lungs, making it very hard to breathe and digest food.

To help support this ground breaking study, CordBank has agreed to collect, process and store cord blood from families, who already have one child with CF, for free.

The latest families to benefit from this support are the Legge family from Queenstown, the Conlands from Wellington and the Hasselmans from Napier.

Bob Williamson, Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of Melbourne, has a research group trying to take cord blood stem cells and push them down the path towards lung cells.  “So far, we have been able to get cells from cord blood to make some lung proteins, such as surfactant, but the CF protein still seems to be present only at low levels.  We have, however, been able to correct gene defects in cord blood stem cells, and groups are trying to put a healthy copy of the CF gene into stem cells and get it to function normally.” 

Professor Williamson also noted that other groups, including one in Perth, Australia, have used similar cells from the placenta to repair lung injury.  “While this research is aimed at helping premature infants, rather than those with CF, it is valuable to know that stem cell science is advancing quickly towards effective treatments of many diseases.”

Professor Williamson noted that this cord blood could be very valuable in future, if a way can be found to get the stem cells to express the CF gene.  “This is a real challenge”, he said, “but there is now a great deal of stem cell science throughout the world aimed at getting this result, and progress is occurring rapidly.”

Eminent neuroscientist Dr Wise Young delivered hope to practitioners and patients alike during his visit to New Zealand recently to raise awareness regarding his clinical trials treating spinal cord injury.

Young is the founding director of the W M Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience and a professor at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. In the US, Dr Young is also well known as the doctor who worked with the late actor Christopher Reeve (Superman) who became quadriplegic in 1995.

Since 2007, Dr Young has been leading a 25 centre trial in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan using umbilical cord blood and lithium to regenerate the spinal cord.

Young says his research will bring hope to sufferers of spinal cord injuries whom to date, medicine has not been able to treat in any meaningful way. “It’s achievable not just within our lifetime, but within a few years,” said Young. “I believe we can fix a person enough so that someone who doesn’t know them wouldn’t know that that person has a spinal cord injury. To me that’s a cure!”

This fascinating work has the potential to give tens of thousands of people worldwide a full life, and is just one of the leaps forward science is making in the field of umbilical cord stem cell research.

Four year old Maia Friedlander became a New Zealand medical pioneer when she became one of the first Kiwi children to have her cord blood re-infused for her brain injury.

Maia was less than a year old when parents Jillian and Daniel realised she was developing differently to her twin sister Arielle. She’d been deprived of oxygen at birth and diagnosed with a cerebral palsy-like condition which affected both her speech and movement. She had trouble with balance and was severely restricted in her learning and development. It was hard for her to concentrate and she had very little speech.

Maia’s parents battled hard to help her in any way they could. In 2008, they became aware of a programme at Duke University in the USA, treating children for brain injury with their own cord blood. Because Maia’s cord blood was banked at birth she was able to get this treatment.

In August 2008, Maia was reinfused with her own cord blood at Duke by Dr. Kurtzberg, a leading paediatric oncologist.

Maia with mum, Jillian in the park

The improvements came thick and fast and Maia, now seven and a year 2 student at school in Auckland, is still developing in leaps and bounds.

Maia’s speech therapist, Ann McElwee, has seen dramatic improvements in Maia. Her class teacher, Louise Canning, who worked with Maia last year also says the changes have been remarkable.

 “When Maia first started with us she wasn’t able to work independently and needed constant one-on-one supervision to perform any tasks. Her progress has been absolutely phenomenal. She can now count, read, write and work on her own.”

Two years after her cord blood treatment, life for the Friedlanders is completely different.

“We have a real, active family which we are so thankful for.” “The two sisters interact and Arielle now has a proper playmate. They fight like most siblings which is actually wonderful to see!” says Jillian.

Jillian and Daniel are adamant Maia would not be making this progress without the cord blood re-infusion. “To every person who is pregnant I say bank their baby’s cord blood as you never know when you might need it.”

Professor Zhan-guo Li has worked with a team of researchers from Peking University People’s Hospital, China, to carry out a laboratory study in which cord blood stem cells were used to suppress inflammation and weaken the disease.

Professor Li said, “Very little is known about umbilical cord MSCs, and there has been no previous report about their use in the treatment of RA. MSCs can exert profound immunosuppression, which encourages their use in the treatment of autoimmune diseases, such as RA. At present, the most common source of MSCs has been bone marrow. However, aspirating bone marrow is an invasive procedure and the number and the differentiating potential of bone marrow MSCs decrease with age. In contrast, the collection of umbilical cord MSCs does not require any invasive procedure.”

The researchers took immune cells from RA patients and showed that the umbilical MSCs were able to suppress the cells’ proliferation, invasive behavior and inflammatory responses. Systemic infusion of the umbilical MSCs into mice was shown to significantly reduce the severity of collagen-induced arthritis.

Speaking about the results, Professor Li said, “RA imparts a massive burden on health services worldwide and none of the currently used agents reaches long term drug-free remission. Therefore, a new and more effective therapy for RA will be very welcome.”

Little Lily Hasselman has already been through a great deal in her first five years. She was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis at just six weeks of age and as a result has to endure daily painful physiotherapy, take medication with every meal, and undergo constant medical checks.

Cystic Fibrosis is a life-shortening genetic condition, with no known cure. Many children with the disease used to die in early childhood, but even with treatment advances their life expectancy rarely exceeds 30 years.

However hope is on the horizon. Professor Bob Williamson of Melbourne University is behind a new Australian medical study which aims to prove that umbilical cord blood can successfully treat cystic fibrosis.

The project will use sibling cord blood to regenerate the damaged lung cells of the affected child. “Most CF siblings cord blood has a 1 in 4 chance of being a perfect match that will not be rejected by the immune system of the child living with CF.”

This is where Lily’s little brother and sister come in. Two year old Henri and six month old Zara are both CF-free and had their umbilical cord blood banked at birth with CordBank.

Professor Williamson says Lily’s siblings’ cord blood won’t be used in the study, but will be kept for when a breakthrough comes. The study will prove the safety of the treatment with donated cells from unrelated people, and lab tests are showing positive signs.

Lily’s mum, Sarah-Jayne’s advice to any parent considering storing their baby’s cord blood is, ”Just do it. You never know what might be round the corner and although as parents you hope your children will never need to use their cord blood – it’s a great insurance.”

Researchers from the University of South Florida and their private sector collaborators say transplanting stem cells derived from umbilical cord blood may offer future therapeutic benefit for those suffering the degenerative and ultimately fatal Alzheimer’s disease, which affects around 43,000 New Zealanders. Those figures are projected to double in the next 15 years, and to continue doubling every 20 years thereafter.

“Umbilical cord blood cells are relatively easy to obtain, appear to be able to differentiate into many kinds of cells, and are immunologically immature, offering them the potential to promote cell survival rather than play a cell replacement role when transplanted,” said Dr. Paul Sanberg, distinguished university professor and executive director of the Center of Excellence on Aging and Brain Repair at the University of South Florida.

One of the major causes of Alzheimer’s is deposits of amyloid beta (AB), a chemical that activates the immune response in the brain which leads to inflammation.

“It is likely that umbilical cord blood can modify this inflammatory response and provide beneficial effects in animal models of Alzheimer’s,” said Dr Jun Tan, professor of psychiatry and Robert A. Silver chair at the Rashid Laboratory for Developmental Neurobiology, USF Silver Child Development Center who recently completed a study in which the brain-to-blood clearance of AB was demonstrated. Based on the findings of this research, Dr. Tan is developing clinical protocols.

Umbilical cord blood cells transplanted into animal victims of Alzheimer’s have demonstrated their therapeutic potential for reducing inflammation, which prevents neurons in the brain from communicating properly.

“Our immediate goal is to move our beneficial findings with cord blood cells into clinical trials for patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Tan. To read more about the study, click here.

• Dr Young’s trials are being undertaken by the China Spinal Cord Injury Network (China SCINET) which he helped established in 2003. It is the largest spinal cord injury clinical trial network.

• ChinaSCINet has completed three clinical trials to date. The first is an observational trial of 500 subjects with spinal cord injury (SCI) to show that the 24 ChinSCINet centers in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan can collect follow up data on people with SCI.

The second is a phase 1 trial carried out at Queen Mary Hospital of Hong Kong University showing the safety and feasibility giving a 6-week course of oral lithium to 20 people with chronic SCI.

The third is a double-blind randomized placebo control trial to assess the safety and efficacy of a 6-week course of oral lithium. The fourth trial is currently being carried out.

This trial is testing increasing doses of umbilical cord blood mononuclear cells (UCBMC) without and then combined with a 6 week course of lithium on 40 patients. If this trial shows promising results, testing the treatment in phase 3 trials in China, United States, India, and Norway will commence.

• As many US patients wanted to take part in the China-based trial, Dr Wise established a US-based group (called SCINetUSA). Several US-based spinal cord injury centres have expressed interest in joining this group including Mt Sinai Medical School (NY); UMDNJ/Kessler Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine and the University of Colorado at Denver. The flagship institution in SCINetUSA is University Medical Center Brackenridge in Austin, Texas.

July has been designated “Cord Blood Awareness Month” by the American Hospital Association’s Society for Healthcare Strategy & Market Development (SHSMD), with the goals of raising awareness about cord blood stem cells and helping empower expectant parents to make informed choices regarding their family’s future health.

Here in New Zealand you can help raise awareness by telling expectant friends and family members about cord blood banking. For everyone who then registers with CordBank – you will both get 1 year’s free storage. For more information click here