Impacts
The title of our webpage is 'Curing the Cure.' Chemotherapy and radiotherapy succeed in most cases of bringing about a cure of head and neck cancer. The cure for diseases involving head and neck cancers is flawed in that it presents a side effect which hurts the quality of life of patients throughout the world. The transplantation of stem cells presents the prospect of using salivary gland stem cell transplantation to reverse the adverse effects of chemotherapy. Organ function was restored in most recipients within 120 days. However, c-Kit is of special note because low amounts of the stem cell pool were able to regenerate gland function, cell size and surface area, and saliva production. This model should be 'transplantable' to the clinic which may lead to either changes in radiation dose levels, clinical use of salivary gland stem cells, or a whole new cure altogether. The stem cells were also able to rescue solid organ deficiency which is nearly unheard of in other experiments. The impact is not yet felt of this innovative use of stem cell transplantation since major breakthroughs have only recently been discovered.
The only people who stand to gain from the research are the patients. In a study of 127 patients with advanced head and neck cancer (see Further Research/Sources), 78% showed evidence of dry mouth. While this number fluctuates study to study, it is more common than not that chemotherapy patients exhibit or complain about symptoms of dry mouth.
As we have come to understand it, dry mouth has other causes, but is often a side effect of cancer treatment. The quality of life for patients is severely impaired.The regeneration of functional salivary gland tissue is thus an important therapeutic goal for the field of regenerative medicine and will likely involve stem/progenitor cell biology and/or tissue engineering approaches.
This is a relatively new application, so money has not poured in to development for new drugs. Unfortunately, it is still in the research phase as many variables have been left out.
Potential Ethical Issues
The simple mention of stem cells does not go without the thought of the heated ethical debate surrounding their use in science and technology. From government funding cuts to religious outcry, the debate over embryonic stem cells have cast a shadow over stem cell technology, receiving a lot of opposition to its further research. The argument for each side of embryonic stem cell research continues interminably, in which weighing the pros and cons has been determined to be different in differing perspectives. The use of a fetus for research purposes has both proponents and opponents. But these are not embryonic stem cells. In this experiment, the glands were donated through surgery by willing participants in university studies who were receiving treatment for head and neck cancers. From their glands the stem cells were cultured, and used to restore their gland function and reverse the effects of dry mouth. Because the use of stem cells in this fashion is relatively new and not yet clinically applied, the outcry has been nonexistent with no debate over its ethics whatsoever. While certainly there are groups who oppose the use of stem cells for their own reasons, our body contains many different types of stem cells with many different purposes including parenchymal, stromal, bone marrow-derived, mesenchymal, and neural stem cells. This experiment shows but one aspect of stem cells as a whole. The mission is still the same, whether through a company or through a university. More and more researchers are leaving their mark in published papers while others strive to connect the research to the clinic.