Terminally ill boy develops brain tumour after desperate parents turn to experimental stem cell therapy

February 19, 2009

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1148602/Terminally-ill-boy-develops-brain-tumour-desperate-parents-turn-experimental-stem-cell-therapy.html

By Daily Mail ReporterLast updated at 11:48 AM on 18th February 2009

A child with a lethal brain disease now has a tumour growing on his brain, after his desperate family used highly experimental fetal stem cell injections to try and cure him.The case in Israel, reported in PLoS Medicine, has prompted scientists to warn they still cannot fully control stem cells.'Patients, please beware,' said Dr John Gearhart, a stem cell scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who has seen desperate U.S. Patients head abroad to clinics that offer unproven stem cell injections.

'Cells are not drugs. They can misbehave in so many different ways, it just is going to take a good deal of time to prove how best to pursue the potential therapy'.

Stem cells have the remarkable potential to develop into many different cell types in the body. However, experts warn they cannot fully control them

The unidentified Israeli boy has a rare fatal genetic disease called ataxia telangiectasia, or A-T Degeneration. This gradually robs the child of movement and most die in their teens or early 20s.

When he was nine, the family travelled to a Moscow clinic that provided injections of neural stem cells from fetuses - immature cells destined to grow into a main type of brain cells.

The cells were injected into his brain and spinal cord twice more, at ages 10 and 12.

Back home in Israel, aged 13, the boy's A-T was severe enough to require that he use a wheelchair when he also began complaining of headaches.

Tests at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv uncovered a growth pushing on his brain stem and a second on his spinal cord. Surgeons removed the spinal cord mass when the boy was 14, in 2006 and they say his general condition has remained stable since then.

A Tel Aviv University team extensively tested the tumor tissue and concluded it had been caused by the fetal cells.

One cell specialist from Stanford University said the boy's brain disease wasn't conducive to stem cell therapy in the first place.

Dr Marius Wernig added: 'Stem cell transplantations have a humongous potential. But if people rush out there without really knowing what they're doing ... That really backfires and can bring this whole field to a halt.'