Using Every Tool Available
When faced with a devastating illness or injury, doctors and researchers use every tool available to find treatments and search for cures. To show how the many subsets of human cells and tissue research come together, let’s take a look at Parkinson’s disease:
Scientists have studied induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells in adult donors who have Parkinson’s disease as well as adult donors who do not have Parkinson’s disease. Such studies enable researchers to better understand the disease and learn what goes wrong in the neurons of those affected.
- In the 1980s, scientists showed that transplants involving dopamine-producing cells from fetal tissue were effective in delaying the onset of Parkinson’s disease. Within the last decade, studies have begun using dopamine-producing iPS cells in human clinical trials for the first time.
- Studies have also utilized the brains of deceased Parkinson’s disease patients who chose to donate their brains for research. Pitt’s Brain Institute Brain Bank is one institution that collects these donations so that scientists around the country can better understand, treat and—perhaps one day—cure neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s disease.
- All medications approved to treat Parkinson’s disease symptoms were tested on human cells at some point in their development.
Preserving Fertility
Infertility impacts one in seven couples in the United States and can have a devastating impact on relationships as well as an individual’s well-being. Pitt researchers are using stem cells to help improve and restore fertility.
One example: Dr. Kyle Orwig is a professor of obstetrics, gynecological and reproductive sciences in Pitt’s School of Medicine. His lab is investigating stem cell and gonadal tissue transplant approaches to reverse infertility caused by disease, medical treatments, genetic defects and aging.
This research has the potential to help Dr. Orwig enhance patient care and outcomes in his role as the founding Director of the Fertility Preservation Program of UPMC and the UPMC Magee Women's Research Institute's Center for Reproduction and Transplantation.
Fighting Back Against COVID-19
The coronavirus pandemic has kept millions of loved ones and family members apart. COVID-19 vaccines, all made possible by fetal cell lines, are enabling people across the world to finally gather together—and hug—again.
Vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna were tested using a decades-old fetal tissue cell line that has been reproduced in the lab since 1973. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses another fetal tissue cell line—PER.C6, which dates back to the mid-1980s—as a carrier to teach people’s immune systems to make antibodies.
Scientists are also using stem cells to better understand how COVID-19 affects various organs, who is at greater risk of falling severely ill and what treatment works best. Read how researchers worldwide are using stem cells—in and out of the lab—to combat COVID-19.