Sydney
6 April 2003
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Peace ... harmony
Rugby league scores a try in a GPS college
Passing the baton
Peaceful action for peace
Catholic Weekly takes a holiday over Easter
Tissue project wins archbishop’s grant
A voice for the disabled
Faith centre moves
Younger set is 50
Fr Chris is guest
Ecumenical Stations of the Cross in wetlands
US move welcomed on partial birth abortion
Project Compassion 2003 - Leyte farmers can face better future
Editorial - Victims of war
Letters - Ash Wednesday
Conversation - Fr Patrick Byrne, Rome-based head of Children’s Mission: Big project or small, ‘it must be for kids’
Voice of Youth - Renaissance of thinking about the Middle Ages
Celebrate Love? Live it to the ‘max’
Heading off conflict before it hits crisis point
Crucifixion story wouldn’t go away
New home for new breed of priest
Christian Brothers spread social justice net
Luke’s Story wins award
300 at social justice forum
Music lets Andrew ‘share my faith’ ...
Tissue project wins archbishop’s grant
A $50,000 grant for adult stem research offered by the Archbishops of Sydney, Archbishop George Pell, has been awarded to a team of scientists at Griffith University, Brisbane, to conduct research into developing therapies for Parkinson’s disease.
The team, led by Associate Professor Alan Mackay-Sim, is looking at the possibility of using stem cells grown from tissue taken from a patient’s nasal lining to replace brain cells lost to Parkinson’s disease.
Prof Mackay-Sim is a senior research fellow and director of the Centre for Molecular Neurobiology at Griffith University.
Last year he was part of a team that ran the world’s first clinical trial on human spinal cord regeneration, transplanting nasal nerve cells, called glial cells, into the spinal cord of a paraplegic patient.
He says the grant will go to research into obtaining the stem cells from glial cells and using them to try to repair brain damage that causes Parkinson’s type symptoms in rats.
Taking cells from a patient’s own nose and developing them in the laboratory before transplanting them into the same patient avoids problems raised by transplanting cells from other people or human embryos (which requires the destruction of embryos), he says.
“Even if you disregard the ethical issue with embryonic stem cells, it still means taking a foreign tissue and injecting it into someone, so there’s the issue of possible tissue rejection,” he says.”The main advantage of using a person’s own cells from their nasal lining is that each person has an easily accessible source.
“Provided you can get the stem cells from them you are avoiding all sorts of technical and ethical problems.”
As the research grant was announced in Sydney, the Archbishop of Melbourne, Archbishop Denis Hart, called for the splitting of Victorian Government legislation that would allow research involving human embryos and ban human cloning. It has already passed through the Legislative Assembly.
The new legislation provides for the legalisation of the use of surplus IVF embryos to be used for stem cell research.
The Health Legislation (Research Involving Human Embryos and Prohibition of Human Cloning) Bill 2003 still needs to be passed by the Legislative Council.
Archbishop Hart would like to see MPs permitted a conscience vote.
“There has been much talk of the great cures that might come from taking stem cells from embryos, but we should not be fooled; cool-headed scientists say much of the talk is exaggerated,” he said.
“We ask at the very least that the Embryo Experimentation Bill be split so that members can vote in support of the good parts and against the bad (as) was allowed in the Federal Parliament.”
Archbishop Pell made his grant available in April last year to support adult stem cell research in opposition to an agreement by Commonwealth, state and territory leaders to try to legalise the use of surplus IVF human embryos for research.
Prof Alan Mackay-Sim’s team won ahead of three other applications to a selection committee consisting of Dr Bernadette Tobin, of the Plunkett Centre for Ethics in Health Care; Dr Peter McCullagh, of the faculty of veterinary science at the University of Sydney, and Associate Professor Colin Thomson, consultant in health ethics at the National Health and Medical Research Council.
Dr Tobin said that there is a lot of promising research using adult stem cells but it does not get adequate attention in the press because “they don’t make as much use of public relations as those who want embryonic stem cells”.
Archbishop Pell said he was delighted the grant would be used to support adult stem cell research in an under-recognised area.
“This is an Australian project of genuine excellence, Australian science at its best, and I warmly congratulate Prof Mackay-Sim and his colleagues on winning this grant,” he said.