DESPITE progress ranging from bone marrow transplants to reconstructed windpipes, it is still easy to forget that many stem cell treatments are still some way off. Which is why a new discovery gives us grounds for optimism (see 鈥淗ealing power of 鈥淒IY鈥� stem cells unleashed鈥�). If it works as well in humans as it has in mice, it should enable patients to produce floods of potentially curative stem cells in their own bone marrow.
All it takes is a drug called Mozobil, plus a natural growth factor, to boost production of stem cells with the potential to repair blood, muscle, bone, ligaments and blood vessels.
The method would use a person鈥檚 own stem cells, so there is no need to tinker with cells outside the body, nor any possibility of rejection. To fix other kinds of tissue we will still need the most versatile of stem cells, the embryonic kind.
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The good news is that Mozobil and the growth factor are all already commercially available, making it easier to do further animal experiments and human trials. Best of all, we can take heart that dazzling advances genuinely promise new treatments, and don鈥檛 just swell the academic literature.