Handle stem cells with caution: expert

Cambridge University researcher and clinician Dr Roger Barker told delegates at this week's ComBio2004 conference in Perth to exercise caution in using stem cell therapies to treat neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's disease.

"It's terribly, terribly important that we have to be patient, and not rush into patients with these therapies," he said.

Barker, who is based at the Cambridge Centre for Brain Repair, said that experiences with foetal cell transplants to treat Parkinson's disease highlighted some of the problems inherent in the treatments. In the UK, where the technique was pioneered more than 15 years ago, some patients have responded very well to the therapy, but in two recent US studies, the transplants resulted in problems with involuntary movement in several patients.

"When it works, it works very well," he said. "But there are pluses and minuses to the use of foetal allografts, as well as big practical and ethical problems with the use of foetal tissue."

The use of stem cells offers some hope of an alternative to researchers, but studies were still underway to determine the best source of dopamine-producing cells, Barker said.

"There has been limited success in getting stem cells to turn into dopamine cells. Embryonic stem cells seem to be the best," he said.

But Barkers said more work was needed to characterise the cells and work out the details of transplanting such cells before human studies could be performed.