Lou Gehrig's disease. It's one of the worst diagnoses anyone could get.
He and his doctors expected his health to have severely declined by now.
But thanks to an experimental stem cell treatment, he has tossed his
cane and is once again playing in the pool with his three kids
"Every day is a good day for me right now," Herada told me. "I've made
some quantum leaps after the surgery and... I'm maintaining the drastic
improvements I've made."
Never, ever consider one data point to be significant, but in the case
of ALS, which is relentlessly progressive and never does this kind of
reversal, I think they may just be onto something here. A reversal in
loss of function would almost certainly mean some fraction of this
patient's motor neurons have been regenerated and that's never been
done. This study was considered dangerous by the FDA and they limited
the stem cell dose to 1/10th what the study authors requested. So this
test was really only considered to be a test to see if the treatment was
tolerated, nobody expected it to make a difference at that dose.
For this guy, it did. Next step is to get the original dose approved and
re-run the study which the FDA will probably be ok with given these
results. Everybody knows there's something game-changing coming with
respect to stem cell therapy, but it's proven to be much more difficult
to implement that expected. I think, just maybe, we're seeing the spark
of discovery. Part of this success is because the Bush stem cell ban is
over, and these stems cells did not come from one of those old
contaminated lines.
Victims of ALS have been given more hope this year than in all previous
years combined, from two different directions. It feels like the ice is
starting to break up as scientific discoveries in this field accelerate.
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