Second Failure May Spell the End for Fetal Tissue Transplants

By Dave Andrusko

Hailed for 15 years as a very promising remedy for Parkinson's disease, a second abysmal failure using tissue transplanted from aborted babies (although not yet published in a medical journal) is apparently already being widely discussed in medical circles, according to the Wall Street Journal.

This latest setback came 21 months after the New York Times published a devastating story detailing the failure of an earlier attempt, building on a report in the New England Journal of Medicine. Not only did these transplants not improve the patient's Parkinson's, they also carried dangerous side effects for the patients whose brains were infused with tissue scavenged from the brains of aborted babies.

The Journal reported that the latest results may "also damp expectations for treatments using stem cells." The reporter no doubt meant stem cells taken from human embryos, which have likewise shown no promise to date, as opposed to stem cells taken from a host of ethically acceptable sources, which have a growing track record of success. (See story, page 7.)

Parkinson's disease is characterized by a progressive loss of balance, tremors, and slurred speech. Parkinson's afflicts at least 500,000 in the U.S.

It is thought to be caused in part by the death of cells that make the neurotransmitter dopamine, an important chemical found in the brain. Scientists had speculated that the infusion of cells taken from the brains of aborted babies would provide a new supply of cells capable of making dopamine which could, at a minimum, treat the symptoms, if not reverse the progress of the disease altogether.

The Journal reported that Warren Olanow, a neuroscientist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, presented the results of the study, which involved 34 patients, at the 7th International Congress of Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders, held in November in Miami Beach, Florida. The experiments require harvesting tissue from as many as eight fetuses, each approximately six to nine weeks old, for each transplant.

The Journal reported that even though brain scans showed that the transplanted cells appeared to be functioning normally, "researchers reportedly weren't able to find any measurable improvement on tests of motor and other skills" and there were also serious side effects.

Thirteen of 23 patients experienced uncontrolled motions of the limbs. Indeed, according to people present at Olanow's presentation, three patients had symptoms so severe they required additional surgery to control them, the Journal reported.

Neither Dr. Olanow or other doctors involved in the study would return phone calls placed to them by the newspaper.

Olanow's study is one of two United States government-funded efforts to study whether cells from aborted babies can repair the brains of Parkinson's patients. As reported in the New York Times and then summarized and analyzed in NRL News, the earlier study was headed by Curt Freed of the University of Colorado, the most vocal proponent of fetal tissue transplants. The results were even worse than with Olanow's patients.

According to the March 6, 2001, Times, "In about 15 percent of patients, the cells apparently grew too well, churning out so much of a chemical that controls movement that the patients writhed and jerked uncontrollably." One of the researchers involved in the study, Dr. Paul Greene, told Gina Kolata of the Times that some of the uncontrollable movements suffered by patients were "absolutely devastating."

"They chew constantly, their fingers go up and down, their wrists flex and distend," Greene said. The patients "writhe and twist, jerk their heads, fling their arms about," Kolata wrote.

Yet various scientists insisted the results were "inconclusive," and pinned their hopes on the Olanow study. Dr. Freed told the Journal he was "personally disappointed and surprised by the outcome."

The Journal suggested that "the negative results of Dr. Olanow's study are also putting question marks over heavy investments in [fetal] stem-cell research by several companies and nonprofit foundations.

'This has profound implications for the ability of stem cells to treat Parkinson's disease,' said J. William Langston, scientific director of the Parkinson's Institute in Sunnyvale, Calif. 'Why isn't it more efficacious? There are a lot of theories, but we don't know.'"

Treating Parkinson's is a "key development target" for several biotechnology companies who are "developing cell-based treatments," the Journal reported.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) isn't planning to fund further clinical trials in the near term, the Journal reported. The NIH spent spent $14 million to support the two studies. Fortunately, as neurologist Dr. Paul Ranalli has explained in NRL News, there remains hope for patients with Parkinson's disease.

There are two established neurosurgical procedures - - pallidotomy and deep brain stimulation - - that have already extended the function and lives of hundreds of patients, and are receiving the increasingly laudatory press coverage they deserve, Dr. Ranalli says. New medications, such as the recently developed drug entecapone, are added each year.