Some organs are not endowed with these large stem-cell reservoirs, however, most notably the brain and heart muscle. Many of the adult body’s organs and tissues, including fat cells and blood, are equipped with their own stash of stem cells whose sole job is to regenerate cells and tissues when older ones are damaged or die off and which can be harvested for research and growth outside the body. With stem cells like those found in bone marrow, scientists are taking advantage of what the body does naturally: generate itself anew. Their daughter would be the first fetus in the world to receive stem cells from her mother in a carefully monitored clinical trial. Obar had concerns, but if the cells worked as they were expected to, it could give her daughter a chance at life, hopefully even a normal life free of her disease. Tippi Mackenzie, a professor of surgery at UCSF and the leader of the study, believed it was worth a shot. But on the basis of new studies suggesting that a developing fetus would tolerate a mother’s transplanted cells better than a father’s, Dr.
#Sanders markx trial
This new trial challenged the ethical question: Was it worth the risk to the mother in order to possibly save the fetus? There was also a chance the transplant could harm Obar’s daughter more than it helped. But removing bone marrow can be risky in pregnant women, so past trials involving alpha thalassemia used stem cells from fathers, which were often rejected.
Ideally, the donor’s healthy stem cells then start dividing and take over for the fetus’ defective blood cells. Blood stem cells, which develop into all of the different types of blood cells, are extracted from a donor’s bone marrow, processed in a lab and injected directly into the umbilical vein connecting the fetus to the mother’s placenta. In utero stem-cell transplants had been tried before for the blood disorder but with limited success.
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