Stem Cell Research And Development In Thailand

[webfact]

Show scientists the road

Chularat Saengpassa ,

Pongphon Sarnsamak

The Nation

Thai successes in stem-cell research have come despite a lack of funding or a national plan

BANGKOK: -- Thailand is fascinated with "roadmaps", but when it comes to life-or-death matters like regenerative science, the country has none.

Shinya Yamanaka and John Gurdon cheered regenerative scientists around the world, including those working on stem-cell body rebuilding in private and public hospitals here, when they were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine on October 8.

But looking back at the environment at home, Thai scientists sighed. Local development of the technique has been direction-less and under-funded.

Stem-cell research has drawn attention from scientists around the world, including Thai scientists, ever since South Korea's Dr Hwang Woo-suk and his team reported that they had successfully created human embryonic stem cells by cloning in 2005.

Even though much of this "breakthrough" research was later found to have been faked, many researchers and scientists in Thailand continued to follow their curiosity to discover how to effectively use stem cells for treatment.

Over the past decade, stem cell-related research centres have mushroomed at public and private educational institutions and hospitals across the country, such as centres for heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, thalassemia and leukaemia.

(click HERE for larger image)

Already this year, at least three universities have reported success in stem-cell research.

Chulalongkorn University early this year proclaimed that it was the first in Thailand to produce human embryonic stem cells and established the country's first embryonic stem-cell bank.

Police General Hospital has developed adult stem cells to treat arthritis sufferers. The hospital is now conducting a clinical trial on 60 arthritis patients aged 45-60. The human trial is expected to be completed next year.

Last week, a team of researchers at Mahidol University's Siriraj Hospital said they had discovered a method to extract pure stem cells from human amniotic fluid, which they say could be potentially used to treat several severe conditions such as arthritis.

But looking behind their success stories, we can see that most of them had to rely on their own funds to establish their laboratories and conduct studies. Only a portion of the money came from the government.

"The government has never paid attention to supporting scientific research. We had to use our own funds collected from donations to do stem-cell research and conduct studies," Lt-General Jongjet Aojanepong, director of Police General Hospital, said recently.

The hospital has spent about Bt3 million-Bt4 million to conduct stem-cell research on arthritis patients. The hospital also wants to conduct another study on how stem cells can restore severely damaged neurons next year, but still lacks a budget to carry on.

Researchers need not only funding but also a national roadmap to steer stem-cell research and development.

Stem-cell therapy will be a key treatment in the near future. We need a formal forum to see the future together," he said.

Stem-cell research is booming in Thailand, but there is no central organisation to systematically manage the research budget and chart the direction of stem cell research.

Even though the government has set up the National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT) to oversee all research in the country, most of the budget was allocated to support research on agriculture, which is a priority need for the country.

The council gets about Bt10 billion from the government to support all research in the country, but only Bt60 million-Bt100 million per year goes to stem-cell research, said Dr Soottiporn Chittrmittrapap, secretary-general of the NRCT.

"I think the number of people who might benefit from stem cell research is only in the hundreds - [less than] in other fields," he said.

However, he agreed with Jongjet's idea of drafting a national roadmap so that Thailand can have a clear direction for researchers and scientists to conduct research.

The roadmap should focus on diseases that remain difficult to treat such as macular degeneration, which is the leading cause of blindness.

"We will come up with the stem-cell research roadmap by the end of this year, as we plan to organise a conference and invite all stem-cell experts to give their opinion on this roadmap," he said.

In Thailand, there are at least four main agencies supporting stem-cell research - the NRCT; the Thailand Research Fund; the National Science and Technology Development Agency; and the Public Health Ministry. But these agencies work separately on stem-cell research.

To draw up the national stem-cell research roadmap, Dr Chatree Duangnet, vice president of Bangkok Dusit Medical Services (BGH), said educational institutions should be a key player in brainstorming ideas with stakeholders to designate the country's goals, strategy, direction and financial support for stem-cell research.

"The government should speed up its work to come up with a national roadmap and policy for stem-cell research to support Thai scientists and researchers, as this kind of therapy will be the next generation of medical treatment," he said.

Bangkok Hospital, run by BGH, has conducted stem-cell research in the treatment of heart disease, but had to stop after the Medical Council issued a regulation forbidding private hospitals from conducting such research.

The hospital has been limited to joining with foreign medical institutions, such as the University of Texas MD Anderson Centre, by supporting financial sources in the study of bone-marrow transplants.

"Stem cells will play an important role in treatment and estimate the risk of medicinefor patients in 10 years. So the stem-cell research roadmap would help us to see which way we should go," Soottiporn added.

-- The Nation 2012-10-22

[DeepInTheForest]

Thanks for posting this, webfact.

But in a previous post, our TV posters/contributors to this forum firmly established that the stem-cell research done here in Thailand had already been done ten years ago. It is thus worthy of our scorn and contempt, not to mention condescension.

I am sure that we will all be happy that such useless redundant research isn't funded by the government, as it was obviously some kind of ploy by those corrupt scientists to continue to draw funding, and also because the free market should be in charge of where funding goes, not a government body. So the government in this case has acted with uncanny wisdom.

Right?

Edited October 22, 2012 by DeepInTheForest

[asdecas]

"Umbilical 'chords'"? Oh dear, play me another one!

[rotorbreeze]

Stem Cell Research..

.... the editor may delete my postings but at least he knows...as the Pharmaceutical companies and Cdn government did a great cover-up 50 yrs ago!

As far back as 1929, a Medical Doctor in Canada discovered a way to extract the ‘life-essence’ of a nine day old fertilized avian egg. Through research, it was found that on exactly the ninth day, all the ingredients necessary to create life are at its’ highest level. In fact, the life-giving proteins are so potent at this stage that a live chick is hatched a mere two weeks thereafter. This method of extraction and freeze-drying processes proved to be a historical monumental success for this Medical Doctor’s patients.

Unfortunately this revolutionary breakthrough discovery died when the doctor died.

Some 50 years later this extraction and freeze drying technique was rediscovered by Norwegian Scientists. Since then the processes have been patented and the amount of clinical studies and research that followed it has yielded nothing less than stunning results.

http://www.mylifepharm.com/index.php

I trust this information will help in your health challenges..keep well and think positive...

Ron

[partington]

Stem Cell Research..

.... the editor may delete my postings but at least he knows...as the Pharmaceutical companies and Cdn government did a great cover-up 50 yrs ago!

As far back as 1929, a Medical Doctor in Canada discovered a way to extract the ‘life-essence’ of a nine day old fertilized avian egg. Through research, it was found that on exactly the ninth day, all the ingredients necessary to create life are at its’ highest level. In fact, the life-giving proteins are so potent at this stage that a live chick is hatched a mere two weeks thereafter. This method of extraction and freeze-drying processes proved to be a historical monumental success for this Medical Doctor’s patients.

Unfortunately this revolutionary breakthrough discovery died when the doctor died.

Some 50 years later this extraction and freeze drying technique was rediscovered by Norwegian Scientists. Since then the processes have been patented and the amount of clinical studies and research that followed it has yielded nothing less than stunning results.

http://www.mylifepharm.com/index.php

I trust this information will help in your health challenges..keep well and think positive...

Ron

Fairy tales and lunacy.

Another con website with simply made up nonsense to fool people with no knowledge.

Beware of con artists who know how to make web sites.

They can say anything and there is NO REQUIREMENT for any of it to be true.

Edited to add warning

Edited October 22, 2012 by partington

[partington]

Thanks for posting this, webfact.

But in a previous post, our TV posters/contributors to this forum firmly established that the stem-cell research done here in Thailand had already been done ten years ago. It is thus worthy of our scorn and contempt, not to mention condescension.

I am sure that we will all be happy that such useless redundant research isn't funded by the government, as it was obviously some kind of ploy by those corrupt scientists to continue to draw funding, and also because the free market should be in charge of where funding goes, not a government body. So the government in this case has acted with uncanny wisdom.

Right?

No, not right at all. This is quite emphatically not the case.

The Nation's report was garbled and in error, in that it mistakenly reported that the Thai Siriraj team was the first to isolate human stem cells from amniotic stem cells /placenta, but this was not the fault of the research team.

Indeed the published papers of the research team make it clear that what they have done is improve the methods for extracting and multiplying these cells.

Their research is by no means redundant and worthy of contempt. You have got this quite wrong.

Most research is not breakthrough, but incremental improvements or additions to methods or knowledge already acquired. This is mostly how science works.

It seems like the Thai team have made a genuine improvement to existing techniques, and are not responsible for errors in newspaper's understanding of what they have done.

Exactly what they announced isn't clear but here is a link to their published work on the subject if you have any interest:

http://www.ncbi.nlm....pubmed/20955626

Incidentally putting the free market in charge of research funding is as absurd as giving semi-automatic weapons to a 2 year old.

You would get 4000000000 versions of viagra and no vaccines.

[HerbalEd]

Thanks for posting this, webfact.

But in a previous post, our TV posters/contributors to this forum firmly established that the stem-cell research done here in Thailand had already been done ten years ago. It is thus worthy of our scorn and contempt, not to mention condescension.

I am sure that we will all be happy that such useless redundant research isn't funded by the government, as it was obviously some kind of ploy by those corrupt scientists to continue to draw funding, and also because the free market should be in charge of where funding goes, not a government body. So the government in this case has acted with uncanny wisdom.

Right?

Then those TV posters were very wrong ... you should be careful of TV "experts."

Most of the stem-cell research being done presently in Thailand is fairly new ... some very new. If those posters knew anything about stem-cell research, they'd know that very little stem-cell research was happening in the world ten years ago ... esp. when compared to today.

Also, BTW, it's common practice ... as it should be ... to do multiple research and clinical trials in multiple areas/hospitals. That's just good science.

Edited October 22, 2012 by HerbalEd

[HerbalEd]

"Umbilical 'chords'"? Oh dear, play me another one!

And it's a pretty tune indeed. Umbilical cord inner-lining and cord blood are super rich sources of viable stem cells ... and the harvesting, deep-freeze storage of such is a rapidly-growing business world wide. What used to be medical waste, is now big-money business.

BTW, when I say deep-freeze, I don't mean freeze-drying. Actually, I think it's impossible for a freeze-dried cell to come back to life.

Edited October 22, 2012 by HerbalEd

[belg]

maybe thai doctors have found artificial insemination, but stem cell reasearch, guess something got lost in translation