autologous stem cell work

[Guest guest]

Dr. Freedman works at the MS Clinic at the Ottawa

General. He did not recommend this for me because

as he said " one of the possible side effects is death. "

Autologous means they come from your own body; they are

adult stem cells. If there is no problem with rejection

then cord or embryonic cells will work better.

Questions remaining: whether to kill off erroneous T cells

first? If so, what method to use? Dr. Freedman is using

intense chemotherapy to nonselectively kill off all of the

cells of the immune system. He wants the new cells created

by the stem cells not to have any immune memory.

The ideal thing then would be to selectively kill off all

the T4 helper cells that have learned the erroneous lesson

about myelin, and then let the hypothalmus mature new ones with

a repertoire that does not include the mistaken cells.

This is more or less Campath-1h claims to do, without using chemo.

It is a monoclonal antibody that acts specifically on leukocytes and kills

them

off. It kills off all of them, and the patient is expected to regrow them

naturally.

Why not boost this process using cord blood cells? The two protocols seem

to

be entirely complementary. In fact if Campath-1h therapy were openly

available

one could pursue both completely as a matter of choice. However the drug is

available approved by the FDA for CLL. It would have to be a physician

who actively pursues this, not her or his patient alone, and it would be

on a similar experimental basis as in the non-conventional use of

naltrexone.

There are still questions:

1. Can't the same thing that caused the MS in the first place

still happen again? As far as known, yes. The cord-blood

people are covering the bases with metal chelation and lifestyle

changes.

2. Campath-1h helps more in the early phases of

the disease and does not seem to stop progression of SPMS

despite absence of new MRI lesions. The only thing that might change

that is if the age of the stem cells (neonatal vs. adult) makes

them somehow more immune to the problems which cause progressive

MS damage. Progression of symptoms must be halted, not just

new lesion formation. Is LDN the only answer?

3. What about new autoimmune problems? People treated for MS

with Campath-1h, in numbers from 25-30%, got thyroid disorders.

These are much more treatable than MS. Most people would

gladly trade one for the other.

-Sullivan

" Multiple Sclerosis as an autoimmune disease. Treatment of poor

prognosis patients with multiple sclerosis using intensive immunoablative

therapy followed by immune cell depleted autologous stem cell

transplantation

(ASCT). " Dr. Mark S. Freedman, 2000-2005, MS Society of Canada