News Releases
October 17, 2008 -- Canwest News Service
Research offers hope to cystic fibrosis patients
Stem cell scientists at the University of Toronto and Kyoto University in Japan have teamed up to jump-start new research that could help prolong the lives of people living with cystic fibrosis, a fatal lung disease that suffocates thousands of young people in Canada.
Canadian scientists were in Japan Thursday to sign a collaboration agreement with Shinya Yamanaka, a Japanese scientist who in 2007 discovered the process of converting normal adult cells into stem cells like those found in embryos.
The method offers scientists a way to study diseases without the ethical dilemma of cloning human embryos by taking cells from a patient's own skin biopsy and converting them into what they call IPS, or induced pluripotent stem cells.
Scientists believe these IPS cells will lead to new therapies to repair or regenerate the diseased lungs.
The process, say doctors, allows scientists to study the mechanisms behind cystic fibrosis in the lab rather than in patients. This could lead, in the short term, to better drugs. In the longer term, the goal would be to replace faulty cells, thereby enabling the lungs to function properly. It's possible that, in the near future, doctors could use the patient's own cells, convert them into IPS cells, which could then be turned into new lung tissue.
Cystic fibrosis is a fatal genetic disease that affects the digestive system and lungs, causing severe breathing problems. Life expectancy for people with cystic fibrosis is usually between 20 and 30 years.
Dr. William Stanford, associate director of the University of Toronto's Institute for Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, said there are currently drugs to treat the symptoms of the disease, but they do not address the underlying cause.
"People haven't been working on it. So people need to start work on it. The partnership with Japan is one where we partnered with the lab that created these (IPS) cells to share technologies and we have also established a new facility in Toronto to make patient-specific IPS cells," Stanford said in a telephone interview from Japan on Thursday.
"We are making cystic fibrosis IPS cells (in Toronto) right now, as we speak."
Stanford says the collaboration with Japan will greatly speed up development of cell-based therapies to treat conditions such as cystic fibrosis and autism.
He also said the joint research will aim to make cell-replacement therapy -- where stem cells are transplanted into the patient -- a reality in the future, if scientists can find a safe way to transplant the newly replicated human cells back into the body.