Catholic hospital helps stem-cell research
CLEARWATER, Fla. (CNS) – Women giving birth by cesarean section at a Catholic hospital in Florida can contribute to cutting-edge research that could benefit burn victims, diabetics and wounded soldiers.
With the permission of the new mothers, St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital in Tampa has been collecting placentas for use in stem-cell research by the regenerative medicine company Stemnion.
The Pittsburgh-based Stemnion recently opened a research facility in Clearwater, so that cells can be extracted from the afterbirth tissue within a few hours of delivery. Since January, 77 women with prescheduled cesarean deliveries at St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital have consented to the placental donations, and 63 placentas have been successfully donated.
Stemnion officials gathered Sept. 23 at the Clearwater facility with church leaders, including Bishop Robert N. Lynch of St. Petersburg, Fla., and Sister Carol Keehan, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, to celebrate the collaboration, which started when Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, then bishop of Pittsburgh, first heard about the fledgling company six years ago.
Sister Carol, a Daughter of Charity, said she and the bishops “wanted to see morally upright, good stem-cell research being done in our many Catholic hospitals.”
St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital was a good candidate for the program because about 7,000 babies are born there each year, nearly 3,000 of them by C-section, although many of those are not preplanned.
The research – morally acceptable under Catholic teaching since it does not involve the destruction of human embryos – is aimed at developing healing therapies including a skin replacement barrier that could reduce disfigurement and contraction in severely burned patients.
“It’s a great opportunity to be on the cutting edge and advance the care of severely injured people, both military and diabetics and people who are terribly burned,” Sister Carol said.
William Golden, a co-founder, executive chairman, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Stemnion, said the company hopes its product “will help patients with burns to heal faster with less scarring and less pain and get them out of the burn unit faster with fewer long-term consequences.”
Golden said Stemnion does not do research involving embryonic stem cells; the Catholic Church opposes such research because it requires human embryos to be destroyed.
The placentas are transported by courier in a sterile container to the Clearwater lab, about 20 miles from the hospital. Stemnion technicians then test, isolate and store the usable stem cells and eventually transport them to the company’s main laboratory in Pittsburgh for use in research.
Each placenta collected has the capacity to yield several hundred million cells and can produce many doses of the investigational medicine that the company has in the trial phase, according to Stemnion.
The company conducted an initial clinical trial at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and other burn centers, and it is now undergoing a safety trial.
Adult stem cells have been found effective in more than 70 treatments, including therapies for diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and heart and spinal cord conditions, according to Do No Harm: The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics.
“This is really about a very volatile issue, and the more opportunities that we have to show how adult stem cells are being used and furthering the cause of science and of healing, the less need there will be to use embryonic stem cells, which we would not be involved in,” said Franciscan Sister Patricia Shirley, vice president of mission for St. Joseph’s Hospital, which is affiliated with St. Joseph’s Women’s under the umbrella of BayCare Health System.
From October 8, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
