LONGECITY

This was forwarded to me:

Melbourne Sun Herald (Australia)

All I have been able to get is that the principal investigator is a Dr Xuetao Pei from the Beijing Institute of Transfusion Medicine and the AMMS Stem Cells Research Center. Can anyone get a handle on how the stem cells are modified and what the treatment involves?

If the clinic is inundated with calls perhaps they should publicise the procedure so other clinics can also offer this service..

Without having investigated this particular case, I must emphasize that these "experimental" stem cell therapies have to be regarded with extreme caution, especially when related information about the physicians is not easy to get. For one particularly scary example, have a look at this one.

Yup yup - a lot of very shady stuff going on in Russia, for example. Much more information needed.

Reason
Founder, Longevity Meme
reason@longevitymeme.org
http://www.longevitymeme.org

I suspect they must be using the technique reported by the Korean group of transferring the nucleus from cells harvested from the patient into embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and once they have cultured them in sufficient quantity and coded them for semi-differentiation periodically transplanting them back into the patient. Aside from the nuclear transfer to align the MHC expression, the key in this whole procedure is probably the differentiation coding to reduce the risk of the ESCs sponateneously forming carcinomas. This is actually a dramatic milestone which should serve as a global catalyst for shifting the policy of nations with very conservative views on this sort of treatment. It is likely the Chinese have experimented in unreported fashion for some time prior to introducing these sort of services to the affluent few. I'm all for it.

Well, at least the researcher and some of the institutions involved do seem to exist. That's better than with many similar reports. Unfortunately, I have no clue how to "investigate" the case further...

I found some pretty good information by googling the guy and his research institution. Unfortunately, I don't have subscriptions to the journals he has published in, but I've checked out some of the abstracts. This one has an email address with an author contact email. He appears to speak english, so I'm going to send him an email to see if I can get any information from the horses mouth.
http://www.wanfangda...0403/040307.htm

I'm still sorting through all the hits for information specific to the procedure mentioned in the newspaper. I'll post what I find and if I get an email reply from him.

Marcus

I suspect they must be using the technique reported by the Korean group of transferring the nucleus from cells harvested from the patient into embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and once they have cultured them in sufficient quantity and coded them for semi-differentiation periodically transplanting them back into the patient.

Why bother? Article says they are using a "blastocyst cell line". Stopp worrying about cancer so much.

Pei has thought about MSC and cord blood .

The article has all the ingredients of a "good story", no information to make it worthwhile and not even a cool headline like "boffins create zombie dogs" [tung] Foetal cellular extracts have been sold as anti- aging treatment since the 1970's with reported good sucess and very similar stories in the press.

Why bother? Article says they are using a "blastocyst cell line". Stopp worrying about cancer so much.

There are some very wealthy people that are not fools (they have the best medical advice at their disposal paying a small fortune to have this procedure performed in China since this is the only place where human eggs can be made available for this purpose). If this is anywhere near as successful as I am hearing then it represents a legitimate life-saving and life-extending treatment which is not being performed in the West. The scientists behind it are published and respected in the scientific community and not to be confused with examples such as John provided links to.

I don't follow what you're getting at here, Caliban.

All ES cells are generally derived from the blastocyst in mice (see graphic courtesy of NIH below). Are you implying that the technique is self-evident and that it would follow that its implementation in humans would be routine? If so how? How long does it take to perform the procedure, from collection of the patient's cells (for nuclear transplant) to preparation and culturing of ES cells? Is a sample of the patient's cells forwarded to China before the patient has to go there? How are the nascent nuclear-transplanted ES cells coded for specific differentiation pathways? What is the means of administration? How many treatments are required? How is efficacy measured? Why do you so flippantly discount the possibility of cancer?

I don't follow what you're getting at here, Caliban.

Prometheus, you seem to be assuming that the patients cells are used. I'd simply suggest it more likely that they inject human "ES" cells from a cell line, in light of the last paper by Pei possibly even just a cord cell line.

The cell line would have to be immunologically matched. Whether stem cells are derived from cord blood, peripheral blood or embryo blastocysts they are still constrained by the major histocompatibility complex alleles in the context of transplantation and thus have to be matched.

secret stem-cell activation material

Mr Wilson said the researchers did not want to reveal the exact details of the procedure so as not to tip off their competitors in the field.

However, he did say the material injected into the participant was taken from a blastocyst line.

Researchers say it is possible to continue growing the required material for years from the one blastocyst.

"Material," what wonderfully descriptive word.



Looking at some of his papers I find that this man could just as easily ellicit the idea of injecting "youth-providing cells." Would he be injecting vector-seeded cells to ramp-up the patient's own cell lines? Going to look over more of them but sofar I think this one is interesting.

The cell line would have to be immunologically matched.

So do we know if Mr. Recipient is on immunosuppresants? People make it sound as if we didn't transplant stem cells every day. Obviously SNT is the ideal solution, but you don't need it to effect potential curative results. Also bear in mind that there are various biobanks being set up in china.

Most importantly, there is still some debate wheter ESC's exibit MHC. MHC-II can be ruled out, MHC-I is controversial.

Apparently antigen compatibility is rare but not nonexistant for some tissue specific stem cells:

from http://www.sagarika.net/faq.php#quest6

What are the chances of finding a suitable stem-cell donor for Sagarika?
The odds of finding a match in an unrelated individual can be anywhere from 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 1,000,000. The odds for a donor of the same ethnicity are much higher, however. You could be that special person!

Why are compatible donors so rare?
A compatible donor must have a compatible tissue type (blood type is irrelevant). Human tissue contains a number of different markers, or antigens. For a successful stem-cell or marrow transplant, the donor’s antigen pattern must be completely compatible with that of the patient. If the antigens are incompatible, the patient’s body will reject the infusion of stem-cells.

from http://www.nature.co...bt0302-237.html

It is extremely likely that ES cell cytoplasm, or the nuclear remodeling proteins present in mature oocytes, will be used to reprogram the phenotype of somatic cells and produce pluripotential cell lines compatible with a wide range of immune subtypes for patients.

Certainly appears important though to use nuclear material from patients for the creation of ESC whenever possible. The data bank and the ability to match donors to patients often enough to render such less significant appears a long way off.
Edited by Chip, 01 July 2005 - 05:49 AM.

So do we know if Mr. Recipient is on immunosuppresants?

One of the recipients is Bruno Grollo, a prominent property developer in Australia, and he is not on immunosuppresants.

People make it sound as if we didn't transplant stem cells every day.

Agreed, bone marrow transplants have been occuring for many years and in that bone marrow hemopoietic stem cells are present. That is not the point, however. We are talking about the transplantation of less differentiated stem cells that are possibly totipotential. Furthermore, these cells are not going to be transplanted into a specific tissue compartment such as bone marrow where they are in a reasonably stuctured environment that will dictate their differentiative destiny. In order for systemic benefits to take place, they will have to be localized in regions associated with all the key stem cell reservoirs in the body. Where and how would this take place?

Most importantly, there is still some debate wheter ESC's exibit MHC.

If that it is the case, it would only be for a brief period. The only cells in the human body that do not express MHC molecule on the cell surface are red blood cells and that may have to do with the fact that they pocess no nucleus either (just heaps of mRNA with which to translate to protein during their lifetime). In contrast ESC's have a nucleus, and in that nucleus are the genes that encode for their particular MHC type which unless they have undergone nuclear transfer still carries the alleles of the donor MHC. Consequently, even if during some developmental stage the expression of MHC molecule may be downmodulated and temporarily less likely to induce an immunogeneic response that is only until the ESC's have differentiated sufficiently to express a full suite of their own MHC molecules.

It is also possible that transplanted cells in fact get cleared by the immune system, while they still manage to initiate a remarkable curative process, such as reported here for eye reconstructive therapy. This would also reconcile Bates' observation of the synonymous use of "secret stem-cell activation material" and "material [...] taken from a blastocyst line".
Whether or not ESCs have substanitial MHCs, the more differentiated graft cells that derive from them certainly do (otherwise they'd face NK mediated clearance for example). Furthermore, minor HC mismatch can be sufficient to create grave clinical complications, including rejection.

I have it from a source close to the recipient that the treatment involved stem cells that were engrafted and that they were in his words "coded". You should also know that I heard about this 2 weeks before it was reported and that I expressed serious doubts about the legitimacy of what my source had been told. But now I have no reason to believe that this procedure is anything more than a SC transplantation using blastocyst-derived ESCs which have been cultured under specific conditions and have likely undergone nuclear transfer with cells derived from the recipient. However, you have raised an important point as per your reference where therapeutic efficacy can be achieved that does not require that stem cells persist. I suspect that the "secret stem cell activation material" must be some combination of growth factors that enable the blastocyst-derived ESC's to reach the desired state of differentiation for transplantation.

It is very likely that the technique is related to the attached paper. See also Wired article.