Stem cells and the search for new antibiotics.

In the past few weeks it has been widely reported that antibiotics which were immune to to bacterial resistance had finally succumbed. The world is currently facing a future where antibiotics become increasingly ineffective , the so called antibiotic doomsday scenario. Once trivial infections will become major events, surgery a life threatening procedure.

Of course this is not a new phenomenon. Resistance has been observed for half a century and the mechanisms studied exhaustively at a molecular level. But complacency must now be at an end.

It may be that stem cell therapy can play a part....

One recently published study has shown that the use of mesenchymal stem cells can amplify or accelerate the rate of antibiotic action. Another new method being investigated involves using the patients’ own bone marrow mesenchymal stromal cells to boost immune response and heal damaged tissue. It may be that one approach to avert the antibiotic crisis would be to target and amplify existing therapies.

In a different study, where sepsis has already occurred it has been shown that MSCs can drastically improve the inherent healing system. The main benefit with stem cells is that the treatment does not simply work to improve the health of one specific organ or part of the body. Instead, the mesenchymal stem cells target many different paths that are part of the infection. This helps reduce the risk of long-term damage as well.

With sepsis being one of the major causes of mortality in a hospital intensive care unit, stem cell treatments could help reduce the hundreds of thousands of lives lost to the disease each year. They could also help us to reduce the billions of dollars spent in medical costs.

For the doomsday scenario to be averted a multi discipline approach will be required. Stem cell therapy will have a part to play, but only if there is an economic route to SC production on a human global scale. To date, only Cynata with its Cymerus technology offers the kind of scaling that would be needed.

Bring it on....