According to the Canadian Biotechnologist 2.0 blog Ontario (Canada) and California together account for about 70 per cent of the stem cell research currently conducted in North America. The article below is bad news for Canada as China appears to have moved ahead in actual advances.
Margaret Munro, Canwest News Service Published: Thursday, January 07, 2010
Stem cells that were extracted from cow bone marrow is cultured in petri dishes J.P. Moczulski for National Post Stem cells that were extracted from cow bone marrow is cultured in petri dishes
China is seen as a wild frontier when it comes to unproven stem cell treatments, but a new report says it has surpassed Canada with legitimate and dramatic advances in the field.
Scientists in China, many of them trained at North American and European universities, published 1,116 articles on stem cells in international peer-reviewed journals in 2008, up from just 37 papers in 2000, says a team at the University of Toronto documenting China's aggressive bid to become a major player in regenerative medicine.
China has now surpassed Canada and Australia to become the world's fifth most prolific contributor to the exploding field that promises repair for ailing organs and tissues, the report says.
Co-author Halla Thorsteinsd?ttir, of the U of T's McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health, says China is often portrayed as "the wild, wild East of stem cell therapy." Thousands of people, many of them foreign "medical tourists," have undergone controversial and unproven injections of fetal or embryonic cells that Chinese clinics promote as treatment for everything from spinal cord injuries to Parkinson's disease.
Criticism and condemnation have rained down on China for permitting such unproven treatments, which has overshadowed the country's serious and legitimate work on regenerative medicine, say Thorsteinsd?ttir and her colleague, Dominique McMahon. They travelled to China to meet with close to 50 clinicians, policymakers and researchers, many of whom have been lured home with lucrative research grants and job offers.
Unproven therapies are still widely offered in clinics despite rules announced by the Chinese government last May that require proof of safety and efficiency for all stem cell therapies, say Ms. Thorsteinsd?ttir and Ms. McMahon.
The new rules, once implemented, should help improve the country's credibility and focus more attention on its legitimate stem cell work, Ms. McMahon said in an interview.
Some of China's "remarkable" and legitimate advances can also raise eyebrows - doctors at a Shanghai hospital cultivated and reintroduced human brain tissue "after taking a sample from the end of a chopstick implanted in a patient's frontal lobe following a disagreement at a restaurant," the report notes.
Blood vessels, bones, cartilage and muscle are also being engineered in Chinese labs - the report notes that one top scientist at Shanghai Tissue Engineering Centre created a "famed mouse" with cartilage in the shape of a human ear on its back.
Chinese researchers have also generated at least 25 human embryonic stem cell lines, and clinical trials are underway on the use of stem cell therapies to treat patients with spinal cord injuries, heart problems and liver and neural diseases.
China is becoming "a major player," says Ms. McMahon, noting that the country should be included in international discussions on setting standards and regulation for regenerative medicine.
The Toronto team says the legitimate work is separate from the controversial therapies that it notes are still available at more than 200 clinics, despite the new rules.
Beike Biotechnology Inc., which offers to inject stem cells into spinal fluid, claims to have treated more than 5,000 patients, including more than 900 foreigners. A group affiliated with the Tiantan Puhua Neuroscience Hospital in Beijing offers lumbar punctures and brain injections of fetal neural stem cells and other stem cells. And the Beijing Xishan Institute for Neuroregeneration and Functional Recovery, which has treated close to 1,500 people, promotes injection of cells from aborted fetuses as a treatment for spinal cord injury and a variety of central nervous system diseases.
"These therapies are sought out by desperate, no-option patients seeking marginal improvements in their quality of life," says study co-author Peter Singer, director of the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health, who urges anyone considering treatment to consult medical professionals.
"Each clinic provides a different therapy for a variety of different ailments and there is no systematic evidence that these therapies work."
Margaret Munro, Canwest News Service Published: Thursday, January 07, 2010
Stem cells that were extracted from cow bone marrow is cultured in petri dishes J.P. Moczulski for National Post Stem cells that were extracted from cow bone marrow is cultured in petri dishes
China is seen as a wild frontier when it comes to unproven stem cell treatments, but a new report says it has surpassed Canada with legitimate and dramatic advances in the field.
Scientists in China, many of them trained at North American and European universities, published 1,116 articles on stem cells in international peer-reviewed journals in 2008, up from just 37 papers in 2000, says a team at the University of Toronto documenting China's aggressive bid to become a major player in regenerative medicine.
China has now surpassed Canada and Australia to become the world's fifth most prolific contributor to the exploding field that promises repair for ailing organs and tissues, the report says.
Co-author Halla Thorsteinsd?ttir, of the U of T's McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health, says China is often portrayed as "the wild, wild East of stem cell therapy." Thousands of people, many of them foreign "medical tourists," have undergone controversial and unproven injections of fetal or embryonic cells that Chinese clinics promote as treatment for everything from spinal cord injuries to Parkinson's disease.
Criticism and condemnation have rained down on China for permitting such unproven treatments, which has overshadowed the country's serious and legitimate work on regenerative medicine, say Thorsteinsd?ttir and her colleague, Dominique McMahon. They travelled to China to meet with close to 50 clinicians, policymakers and researchers, many of whom have been lured home with lucrative research grants and job offers.
Unproven therapies are still widely offered in clinics despite rules announced by the Chinese government last May that require proof of safety and efficiency for all stem cell therapies, say Ms. Thorsteinsd?ttir and Ms. McMahon.
The new rules, once implemented, should help improve the country's credibility and focus more attention on its legitimate stem cell work, Ms. McMahon said in an interview.
Some of China's "remarkable" and legitimate advances can also raise eyebrows - doctors at a Shanghai hospital cultivated and reintroduced human brain tissue "after taking a sample from the end of a chopstick implanted in a patient's frontal lobe following a disagreement at a restaurant," the report notes.
Blood vessels, bones, cartilage and muscle are also being engineered in Chinese labs - the report notes that one top scientist at Shanghai Tissue Engineering Centre created a "famed mouse" with cartilage in the shape of a human ear on its back.
Chinese researchers have also generated at least 25 human embryonic stem cell lines, and clinical trials are underway on the use of stem cell therapies to treat patients with spinal cord injuries, heart problems and liver and neural diseases.
China is becoming "a major player," says Ms. McMahon, noting that the country should be included in international discussions on setting standards and regulation for regenerative medicine.
The Toronto team says the legitimate work is separate from the controversial therapies that it notes are still available at more than 200 clinics, despite the new rules.
Beike Biotechnology Inc., which offers to inject stem cells into spinal fluid, claims to have treated more than 5,000 patients, including more than 900 foreigners. A group affiliated with the Tiantan Puhua Neuroscience Hospital in Beijing offers lumbar punctures and brain injections of fetal neural stem cells and other stem cells. And the Beijing Xishan Institute for Neuroregeneration and Functional Recovery, which has treated close to 1,500 people, promotes injection of cells from aborted fetuses as a treatment for spinal cord injury and a variety of central nervous system diseases.
"These therapies are sought out by desperate, no-option patients seeking marginal improvements in their quality of life," says study co-author Peter Singer, director of the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health, who urges anyone considering treatment to consult medical professionals.
"Each clinic provides a different therapy for a variety of different ailments and there is no systematic evidence that these therapies work."