Cellular technologies in Russia: details
The strictness of Russian laws is mitigated by the non-binding nature of their execution<url>
The cage saves
A law on the use of stem cells in medicine has been prepared
Irina Nevinnaya, Rossiyskaya Gazeta – Federal Issue No. 119-2013
A "living organ" transplanted to a sick person not from a donor, but grown from its own cells is not at all the dreams of science fiction writers, but the near future of cellular medicine. A law is being prepared that regulates the use of cellular medicine in our country.
There are already not just experiments, but also real operations, when patients grow new vessels, repair damaged brain or liver.
The path "from a laboratory test tube" to a real doctor and a patient who can be treated with the help of the latest technologies will soon become shorter. The Ministry of Health has prepared a bill on the circulation of medical cellular products.
The document has been approved and will be submitted to the government in the near future. This was announced yesterday by the Minister of Health Veronika Skvortsova, speaking at a session of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences dedicated to the development of cellular technologies and regenerative medicine.
The bill is complicated. Moreover, there are a lot of all kinds of conjectures connected with cellular technologies, and ordinary people who are not related to biomedicine judge stem cells exclusively by "scary" revealing publications in the yellow press. Experts have been preparing a new law for three years. And, according to the Minister of Health Veronika Skvortsova, the document passed an "unprecedented run–in", and in other words, it was widely discussed both in the Ministry of Health, in the RAMS, and in Moscow State University.
The direction is so promising and promising that, for the first time, a two-day session of the general meeting of academicians of medicine was devoted to it by the President of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Ivan Dedov.
Scientists and doctors talked about the prospects of using stem cells, genetically engineered cell complexes to help with such diseases, which today are treated with difficulty, if not at all amenable to either medication or surgical treatment.
With the help of cellular drugs, it is possible to restore the damaged brain – with strokes, spinal cord injuries. It is possible to "force" new vessels to grow instead of those affected by atherosclerosis. It is possible to nurse deeply premature babies and infants affected by hypoxia during difficult childbirth, reducing the threat of their disability.
All this is only a small part of the tasks and directions that are being worked on in scientific institutes and medical institutions in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Siberia.
"Cellular technologies, the use of stem cells is a rapidly developing direction in biomedicine, capable of solving the most complex tasks," said Ivan Dedov, President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences. – This includes the restoration of damaged organs and tissues, including the central nervous system, and the treatment of severe hereditary and acquired diseases. The use of cellular technologies is sometimes the only alternative to organ transplantation. Finally, the appearance of three-dimensional cell cultures makes it possible to create bioimplants that are as close as possible in their characteristics to the replaced tissue and do not cause rejection."
In fact, the development of cellular technologies over time is able to solve the problems associated with donation – this is the compatibility of the transplanted organ, and the shortage of donated blood and organs, and the threat of getting a severe infection with the transplanted material. Although, as many speakers noted, the confirmation of safety when using cells in practical medicine is also one of the most important tasks.
"This area has been developing rapidly in recent years, although some studies are imitative in nature, repeating to some extent the work of leading scientists from the United States, Japan, and other countries," Veronika Skvortsova noted. – Meanwhile, regenerative technologies based on cellular products are an opportunity to transfer medicine to a qualitatively different level, as happened in due time with the invention of vaccines, the introduction of gene technologies. It is absolutely necessary for us to promote our scientific schools. One of the key conditions for successful research is the need to model the processes occurring in the application of cellular technologies on animals and cell lines. We need a basis for transferring their use for the treatment of people, in practical medicine. That is, clinical studies are needed.
Finally, we need production sites where standardized cellular products can be reproduced.
The basis for all this is created by the law on the circulation of medical cellular products prepared by us together with the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, work on which lasted three years."
According to Skvortsova, according to the recently adopted program for the development of medical science, it is already planned to create four research centers for the development of biomedicine. In addition, bioclusters will appear at large medical universities.
"We need to open several specialized centers for the development of cellular technologies," said Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Ivan Dedov. – This would simplify the conduct of clinical trials of cellular products and their introduction into practical medicine. We need to think about what sites such centers will be organized on."
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru05.06.2013