PARIS, Oct 6 (AFP) - A small British biotech firm is battling mainstream scientific opinion after claiming to have made an accidental discovery into stem cells that could revolutionise medicine, New Scientist says.
The company, TriStem, contends that, with its first tests on humans, it has been able to rescue patients suffering from a vicious form of anaemia who were on the brink of death, the British weekly reports in next Saturday's issue.
"If they are valid, the firm's scientists could have made a breakthrough comparable to Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin," it reports.
The work focusses on stem cells, the "blank slates" which later differentiate into the specialist cells that make up the body's tissues.
The great hope of scientists working in this area is that stem cells can be harvested and then coaxed into growing into specific tissue, thus providing a treatment for degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's, reversing liver damage or fixing damaged hearts.
But progress has been slow, hampered by lack of knowledge as to how the cells differentiate and ethical rows over embryonic stem cells, the most versatile material of all.
TriStem's approach is radically different from that followed by mainstream researchers, many of whom are suspicious or outright dismissive of the firm's claims, New Scientist says.
The apparent breakthrough was discovered by accident in 1990, when leukaemia researcher Ilham Abduljadayel was experimenting with a commercially-made antibody called CR3/43 and immune-system molecules that destroy cells which are bound to antibodies.
In one experiment, she accidentally forgot to add the immune molecules -- and discovered that the dark leukaemia cells, after being immersed in the antibody solution became transparent and flourished.
The antibodies had somehow reversed the cells' differentiation, turning them into bone marrow stem cells, a phenomenon that amounted to biological heresy, according to Abduljadayel.
"At first, I thought I was going nuts. I repeated it again and again," she told New Scientist.
Although they found no support for their research and even less a journal in which to publish their findings, Abduljadayel and her husband took out patents on the discovery in 1994 and founded TriStem to commercialise it.
Further work, according to TriStem, has enabled the "retro-differentiation" to go back even further, turning back the clock so that bone marrow stem cell become as versatile as embryonic stem cells.
And by exposing these cells to growth factors already widely used in conventional stemcell research, Abduljadayel says she could produce in the lab almost any kind of tissue.
In their first experiment on humans, TriStem gained permission from the Indian authorities to try the technique on four patients in Mumbai with severe aplastic anaemia, a condition where the bone marrow stops making enough red blood cells, immune cells and platelets.
All four, who needed frequent blood transfusions just to stay alive, had "spectacular recoveries" within three weeks of having their immune cells treated with the antibody, New Scientist says.
TriStem is scheduled to announce its results on its website this week, but New Scientist says mainstream researchers remain skeptical.
Major doubts remain about the core of the claim about the conversion to the state of stem cells, and critics insist that major, controlled trials are needed to prove that the technique is not only effective but safe, the report says.