To date, apart from bone marrow transplantation to treat blood disorders or conditions,
there are no other stem cell therapies available to regenerate damaged tissues or organs.
We've developed a technique which, for the first time can generate stem cells that can potentially
be used to repair any part of the body. We aspirate fat cells and we treat these cells
with two compounds; a drug called Azacitidine and a growth factor, and over three weeks
or so, the cells convert into a cell type that we call an Induced Multipotent Stem Cell.
When we inject these cells where we have damaged bone or damaged muscle
these IMS cells directly contribute to tissue repair.
This method is safer than current stem cell generating methods.
For example, we cannot use embryonic stem cells to treat or regenerate damaged tissues
because of their tumour-forming ability.
The other problem is when generating tissue-specific stem cells,
there is a need to use viruses to transform those somatic cells into
tissue-specific stem cells which is clinically unacceptable.
Our new techniques completely overcome these issues.
This development has enormous potential for treating back and neck pain, spinal injury and joint and muscle degeneration.
With up to 20% of spinal implants, there is either delayed healing or they don't heal at all
and this increases in diabetes, smokers and with ageing.
Spinal implants currently used to replace damaged or troubled discs don't always weld with the adjacent bones.
Transplanting these reprogrammed cells, we hope to be able to
better fuse these implants to the host bone.
Potentially, this is a huge leap forward for orthopaedic and spinal procedures.