Speakers' abstract
Stem cells update
Scolding N, Chair of Neurology, Frenchay Hospital, Bristol
The possibility of treating multiple sclerosis with stem cells has received much interest, and generated much excitement, in both the scientific world and amongst the multiple sclerosis community, for well over a decade. Initially, most attention focused on embryonic stem cells, and much research continues to concentrate on these cells. There has also, however, been continuing interest in alternative sources of stem cells, and in Bristol we have concentrated on adult stem cells, studying both brain-derived and bone marrow-derived cells, and their capacity for repair in MS. We believe not only that these cells have a far more impressive safety profile, but that their ability to engage in and promote repair through a wide variety of mechanisms confers on them considerable advantages – and that one of these is imminent translation from laboratory to early and necessarily experimental clinical studies. In this presentation, these aspects of brain and bone marrow derived stem cells will be considered; our findings concerning their properties relating to MS and cell damage in the brain will be discussed; and our efforts to begin the clinical testing of stem cell therapies in the form of a phase one proof-of-concept safety study of autologous bone marrow stem cell therapy in patients with MS will be described.