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Adult Stem Cells Greatly Accelerate Bone Regeneration in Australian Trial

 By Hilary White

MELBOURNE, August 8, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Adult stem cells have helped to accelerate the healing of severe leg fractures in Australian trials. The trial involved five men and four women who had suffered the worst type of compound bone fractures in serious road accidents, some of whom still could not walk up to 41 months after their accidents.

One man who suffered a compound fracture and was still using crutches a year later, regained the use of his leg the day after the procedure and is now fully recovered, pain free and regularly runs and plays football. Eight of the ten patients experienced full bone regrowth. One man broke both his tibia and femur but only the tibia re-grew. Another patient required further surgery.

The technique was developed by Dr. Richard de Steiger, director of orthopaedic surgery at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, who told media that his team hopes it can be applied to hip replacement procedures as well as accidental injuries. The technology was developed by the hospital's regenerative medicine company, Mesoblast, which has the worldwide licence to commercialise. Dr. de Steiger said it is between three and five years away from being used in hospitals.

"The potential for doing this kind of work is very exciting … if we could try to re-grow cartilage it would mean we'd be able to help people with early arthritis of the knees and hips as a result of sporting trauma," Dr. de Steiger said.

In the procedure, bone marrow stem cells are harvested from the patient's pelvis in a non-invasive day procedure using a needle. The cells are cultivated in a laboratory until they have divided to create 15 billion cells over six weeks. Surgeons then applied the stem cells directly to the fractures. One patient in the trial, 36 year-old Anthony Giancola was walking the following day.

"Most of the time you have to have a secondary operation on the hip bone and take some bone graft out and that's often more painful than the surgery for the actual fracture."

"All these patients have avoided the need for having a second operation to get bone from somewhere else in the body. Instead the bone's just grown outside the body in a lab," Dr. de Steiger said.

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