S'pore Firm Uses Stem Cells to Help Burn Victims
A SINGAPORE company has used stem cells to help victims of serious burns and other wounds to grow fresh skin. While more work must be done to test the promise of the new treatment, the procedure has so far allowed three patients to do away with painful skin grafts.
The work led by Singapore-based biotech company CellResearch Corporation is done at the National Hospital of Traditional Medicine and St Paul's Hospital Burns Centre in Vietnam. It involves growing stem cells on synthetic scaffolds, and transferring them onto patients' wounds.
So far, said Dr Ivor Lim, the company's chief medical director, the healing rate has been as fast as with a conventional skin graft, with no complications or rejection by the patient. Patients had been saved the pain and additional scarring of taking another piece of skin from the body to help the wounded area heal, added Dr Lim, who is a plastic and hand surgeon.
'It would also be a help for patients who are so badly wounded they do not have enough skin for a graft,' he said.
Commenting on such work, burns expert Professor Andrew Burd of Hong Kong's Prince of Wales Hospital said it is an area of immense research interest around the world. 'We do not anticipate waiting for too long before we see the routine clinical application of stem cell-based topical wound treatments which are going to revolutionise medicine as we know it today,' he said.
Dr Burd is chief of the division of plastic and reconstructive surgery in the hospital's department of surgery. While cautioning that more had to be learnt about the body's immune response and longer-term behaviour of the new skin, he said: 'Without a doubt, the work from CellResearch is very exciting.' The 'holy grail' for doctors dealing with wounds, particularly burns surgeons, is to achieve regeneration in deeper or full thickness skin wounds, which cannot heal properly on their own. Wound healing is seen as an area which will reap the rewards of stem cell research early, and groups around the world are looking at a variety of stem cells and methods of doing so.
CellResearch made headlines last year, with its discovery that stem cells can be harvested from the umbilical cord lining, and that these are versatile enough to turn into many of the body's cells. By taking such cells from the baby's umbilical cord, which would otherwise be discarded, the company has sidestepped the controversial use of embryos as a source of stem cells. Its other research has shown how stem cells can transform into skin, bone, and fat cells - and more recently, mucin-producing cells. Mucin is found in all mucous gland secretions, and mucin-producing cells line internal structures such as air passages.
Various skin cell types produced by the stem cells have also been used to produce 'cultured skin', which could one day be used as replacement skin for injuries, or as a tool to study the effects of different compounds on the skin - say by cosmetics companies.
Cell Research is now working with the National University of Singapore to study how stem cells can be used to treat diabetes.
It is also among a group of Singapore-based firms which will highlight their work at the international biotechnology conference BIO 2006 in Chicago next week.
