@ImaScientist, Yes, a most important paper and one of my favorites. To anyone interested, whenever you see a paper talking about MAPC's start by checking the author affiliations and conflict of interest statement. Many of them are supported/promoted by Athersys, because they're the only ones with any significant interest in these cells. Very little in the way of independent academic research, so this paper by Khan and Newsome stands out. As far as I can tell, they are independent researchers from the UK. So, the paper makes some interesting observations. Page 2 I believe, you'll find a statement to the effect, "Although MAPC's meet the ISCT criteria for MSC,...here's x, y, z that make them different..." Show that sentence to a Athersys person and watch them do a dance. Because it's essentially saying MAPC's are mesenchymal lineage, which means ATHX is stepping on Mesoblast IP... probably. It's a point I'd like to discuss more with out patent lawyer friend below. Next thing to note in this paper is where they talk about MAPC's being cultured in an oxygen-free environment and multiplying like... I was going to say cancer cells, but let me say "little bunnies" instead. These are NOT cancer cells, I'm not saying that... but if you peruse the paper they also talk about VEGF and the ability for MAPC's to form blood vessels (ie these cells are "angiogenic") compared to MSC's which do not have that capacity.
Why might that be of concern? First, there's no issue that the cells are going to form cartilage in the lungs - as far as we can tell, the cells don't graft. They are eliminated after a week or so... BUT what might they do during their sojourn besides treating say a stroke. It has to do with wound repair. We know that in order to survive, a multi-cellular organism must be able to repair a wound, and the mechanisms to do that are highly conserved across species and millions of years. It's a core fundamental requirement. When there's a wound cells divide and new blood vessels are formed to bring in nutrients and repair tissue... it's all done under very tight control based on oxygen gradients and growth factors and a host of parameters. When a cancer grows, it has similar issues. It's like a construction site in the middle of a big muddy field. To bring in trucks and supplies sturdy roads, ie blood vessels, have to be laid down to bring in oxygen rich blood and nutrients. We know that because one of the blockbuster medications of the modern era is bevacizumab (Avastin), used to treat cancer and it works by binding up VEGF (a blood vessel growth factor). So, cells that like to grow in oxygen poor environments and that are good at forming blood vessels by releasing VEGF into the micro-environment bother me as a potential investor/patient. It's one thing to give MAPC's to an 80-year old stroke victim, which was ATHX's primary activity prior to C-19. It's another to give them to a 50-year old ventilator patient... who MIGHT have a silent tumor growing in the breast, prostate, pancreas, colon, lung, etc, etc that might get turned on by a little VEGF... again, it's a theoretical risk, but I believe the FDA will scan ATHX data very carefully for any signals of that nature, especially if they start treating younger patients. ATHX will tell you I'm "crazy". I didn't write the paper above, I just read it and applied some common sense. Final question to ask yourself: why doesn't anyone else work with those MAPC cells?
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