The University of Kansas Medical Center campus may soon be home to a centralized adult stem cell research facility.? Senate Bill 199, which proposes the creation of the Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center at KUMC, was passed by the Kansas State Senate last Thursday, said Mary Pilcher-Cook, a Kansas senator from Shawnee and the lead sponsor for the bill.
Stanford M.D/Ph.D. student David Purger, changes the media of retinal ganglion cells from a rat in the Monje Lab at Stanford Universitypy Center. (LiPo Ching/San Jose Mercury News/MCT)
?In our country, we have stem cell tourism where people will travel abroad to get treatments with stem cells because they?re so desperate for help,? Pilcher-Cook said. ?The Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center would be the first in the nation and even internationally to expedite research that?s happening in the lab with adult stem cells showing a measuring to get to the patient.?
Pilcher-Cook said the facility would prohibit embryonic stem cell research and instead focus on adult stem cell research, which she said has been the most successful and peer-reviewed research.
?The center will facilitate treatment and research with adult stem cells, the only type of stem cell that has shown promise for organ repair in patients thus far,? said Buddhadeb Dawn, director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at KUMC, in his testimony before the Senate Committee on Senate Public Health and Welfare.? As a principal investigation of heart repair using adult stem cells, the facility will allow experimental therapies to be more easily translated to patients, Dawn said.
Adult stem cells have been most widely researched because they are cheaper, easier to obtain, and less controversial than embryonic stem cells said Banupriya Sridharan, a bioengineering graduate student from Chennai, India who researches stem cells at the University.
?The most widely discussed controversy is the source of stem cells,? Sridharan said.
Adult stem cells can be extracted from liposuction fat, donated organs, and most commonly amputated limbs.? Embryonic stem cells are obtained from fertilized human embryos, which some consider to be killing human life, Sridharan said.
?Scientific research at the University of Kansas Medical Center includes human adult stem cell research as well as human embryonic stem cell research using cell lines approved by the administration of President George W. Bush,? said CJ Janovy, spokesperson for KUMC.? KUMC currently houses 23 laboratories where therapies treating conditions such as cancer, spinal cord injuries, and sickle cell anemia are being developed, Janovy said.
The estimated cost of the facility would total $10.7 million over a ten year period, said Douglas A. Girod,? executive vice chancellor of KUMC, in his testimony supporting S.B. 199.
?These are not funds we currently have for this program at the medical center,? Girod said. ?Funding through the appropriations process of the state or development work in the private sector would be needed.?
Marshall Schmidt is a graduate student majoring in biomedical engineering from Mount Hope. Read more from Marshall Schmidt.
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