An international team has identified "cell precursors" that could enable the heart to repair itself by transforming into adult heart cells. These findings have just been published in the journal Nature.

The study, carried out on mice by Kenneth Chien of the University of San Diego, has shown that certain cells programmed to form heart muscle during foetal life do not completely disappear after birth, as was believed until now. Unlike embryonic stem cells, these cells have already undergone initial specialisation, which predestines them to become heart cells.

Alongside this discovery, the studies of Prof. Ménasché at the Georges Pompidou European Hospital also deserve mention. He has developed a treatment that uses cells obtained from the skeletal muscle of a patient. Despite encouraging results, it is impossible to draw definite conclusions about the effectiveness of this technique. Moreover, other studies involving foetal, neonatal or embryonic stem cells pose many ethical and technical problems.

This is why the discovery of these adult heart cells enabling the heart to repair itself provides new hope for therapies.

Le Quotidien du Médecin (Elodie Biet) 10/02/05 - Cyber presse 10/02/05 - La Croix 11/02/05

Chinese researchers have been given the green light to start clinical trials for a therapy based on adult stem cells to treat patients with leukaemia.

The study has already been carried out on sick animals. After injecting them with adult stem cells, the researchers noted an increase in blood cells.

The first phase of the clinical trials will be run on 30 healthy participants who will receive stem cells taken from the bone marrow of other people. If the trials are conclusive, these adult stem cells will be injected into patients suffering from leukaemia.

SciDev.net 04/02/05

The team at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh led by Briton, Ian Wilmut, the "father" of the first cloned sheep, has been granted permission to clone human embryos as part of his research into neurological diseases. According to biologists, the cloned embryonic cells are more easily grafted onto organisms whose cell nucleus has been used for the cloning than embryonic cells produced through IVF.

However, Jean-Yves Nau, a journalist with the French daily, Le Monde, stressed that "from a strictly scientific viewpoint, the issue is far from decided". For certain researchers and biologists, research of this kind is premature while for others, like Prof. Axel Kahn (Cochin Institute – Paris), they will enable techniques to be developed that lead to cloning babies (reproductive cloning).

In August 2004, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) granted permission to Prof. Miodrag Stojkovic's team at the Institute of Human Genetics in Newcastle to perform therapeutic cloning (see August 2004 press review). The law authorising therapeutic cloning was adopted in the UK in August 2002.

Reproductive cloning remains banned in the UK and researchers are required to destroy embryos after 14 days of development. The embryos serve as stem cell "reserves" that are used for research.

After noting in Le Monde that cloning by nucleus transfer in animals is "far from being mastered as a technique, producing numerous and frequent pathological processes", Jean-Yves Nau questioned: "How then can one consider that it is now time to proceed with the first stages of human experimentation?"

 Le Figaro 08/02/05 - Le Nouvel Observateur (Cécile Dumas) 08/02/05 - CNN.com 08/02/05 - BBC News 08/02/05 - Le Quotidien du Médecin 11/02/05 - La Croix 11/02/05 - Le Monde (Jean-Yves Nau) 11/02/05

French magazine, L'Express, has revealed that 300,000 Peruvian women were sterilised in Peru between 1996 and 2000 under the Fujimori regime, often against their will. President Alberto Fujimori implemented a fertility reduction policy as part of a family planning programme. This programme was financed by the UN and USaid, an American agency for international development, which provided 30 million dollars in funding between 1993 and 1998. According to L'Express, these organisations were not able to see that this birth control campaign "quickly got out of hand" and that very many women were sterilised against their will.

For Fujimori, the goal was to reduce the birth rate to increase GDP per inhabitant. Poor populations were the first in line. In the country, "tube-tying festivals" were organised where women were sterilised in groups of 20 to 30. Tubal ligation was referred to as "voluntary surgical contraception" and presented as an additional and free means of contraception.

In order for the women to accept tubal ligation, medical staff used coercion and false promises. A senior officer at the time explained that "excesses were committed, there's no denying it". (...) "We were under a lot of pressure from the government and had very high quotas. We were soldiers and had to obey orders. Every Monday, we had to hand in a report stating the number of ligations performed over the past week." From the programme director to the nurses, everyone had "a contingent of women to operate on or convince". Those who succeeded were rewarded, the others "risked the sack", explained Carlos Lozano, who was a doctor at the time in a hospital in Iquitos (Peruvian Amazon). He added, "It was a dictatorship."

Since 2000, three commissions of inquiry have been set up by the Peruvian Parliament but their conclusions were rejected each time. According to L'Express, this is because these commissions mainly consisted of conservative MPs who denounced all forms of contraception, over and above the forced sterilisations. For Maria Esther Mogollon, president of MAM-Linea Fundacional, the only feminist organisation to be mobilised over this issue: "Had this report been presented by someone with a different political background, it would have been successful."

Nelly Calderon, public prosecutor for the Republic of Peru, explained last year to the Spanish daily, El Pais, that due to the sterilisation of "whole communities", she wanted to charge Fujimori, currently in exile in Japan, with genocide. Today she reckons she "lacks information".

 L'Express (Clotilde Warin) 07/02/05

A study carried out by Maltese anti-abortion organisation, Gift of Life, has revealed that 86% of the population is against abortion while 92.9% believe that the unborn child has human rights and should be protected.

26.7% are in favour of abortion to save the mother's life, as well as in cases of rape (13.4%), incest (7.9%) and abnormalities (9%).

For 82.1% of the population, Malta should not agree to legalise abortion as a result of its entry into the European Union.

In January 2005, Gift of Life submitted an amendment to the Constitution of Malta for greater protection of the unborn.

A team led by Dr Edith Puchelle at INSERM (French National Institute for Health and Medical Research)* has shown that mice embryo stem cells placed in culture can differentiate into different types of airway epithelium cells enabling functional airway epithelium tissue to be completely reconstituted.

These results are published in the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology.

Before therapeutic applications for patients with airway diseases (mucoviscidosis, emphysema, asthma, respiratory infections, etc.) can be considered, numerous procedures need to be verified involving cell grafts, cell gene correction, lifespan, functioning, clinical application, etc.

* Dr Edith Puchelle, Inserm, UMR-S 514, Dynamique cellulaire et moléculaire de la muqueuse respiratoire (Cellular and Molecular Dynamics of the Airway Mucosa), Reims.

Le Quotidien du Médecin 08/02/05