(December 3, 2008). http://www.closerlookatstemcells.org/Patient/ISSCRPatientHandbook.pdf (Accessed April 2014).
Belgium
Belgium
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Belgium
The environment of Belgium is one of the most productive in all of Europe for conducting stem cell research, and the country has assumed an international role in furthering stem cell research and therapies. Belgium is one of only seven European countries that allow human embryonic stem cell research using embryos donated from fertility clinics. Belgian law allows scientists to use laboratory-created embryos in their research but only when the research is deemed critical to finding a cure for major diseases. Belgian researchers also continue to use adult stem cells. Most research is carried out at the regional level. For example, the government of Flanders funds the Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie (VIB), which combines the talents of researchers from Ghent University, Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven), University of Antwerp, and Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Another partnership brings Belgium’s French-speaking university researchers together in the Wallonia region. The national government of Belgium contributes some 40 percent to stem cell research. Other funds are derived from partnerships with private companies engaged in stem cell research, such as Cardio3 BioScience, a pharmaceutical company based in Monto-Saint-Guibert. That partnership also brings Belgian scientists together with cardiac stem cell researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Since the 1960s, Belgian researchers have been making major breakthroughs in stem cell research and devices, and they are involved in using stem cells to treat illnesses that include sickle cell anemia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, liver disease, muscular dystrophy, and various forms of cancer.
Breakthroughs
In 1963, Guy Alexandre, a surgeon at Catholic University in Louvain, Belgium, became the first surgeon in the world to carry out a kidney transplant on a patient who had been declared “brain dead” even though his heart was still beating. Previously, physicians had waited for a patient’s heart to stop beating before beginning a transplant. Alexandre subsequently established criteria for determining the conditions that must be met in order to classify a patient as brain dead after experiencing severe craniocerebral injuries: complete bilateral mydriasis, complete absence of reflexes, complete absence of spontaneous respiration in the five minutes following the removal of mechanical respiration, falling blood pressures that call for increased dosages of vasopressive drugs, and a flat electroencephalogram (EEG). The kidney transplant patient died the following month from septicemia. However, Alexandre’s transplant and the criteria he established redefined the concept of brain death and transformed transplant procedures.
In 1998, Belgian physicians successfully injected 48 patients suffering from sickle cell anemia with bone marrow stem cells and two with cord blood stem cells, leading to the disappearance of sickle cell symptoms. While it is illegal to engage in reproductive cloning, as it is in most countries around the world, Belgian scientists have been pioneers in cloning human embryos in laboratories, a discovery that has significant potential for solving infertility problems.
In 2012, Belgian researchers from the University of Antwerp and the Laboratory of Experimental Hematology of Vaccine and Infectious Disease Institute began developing stem cell therapies designed to restore neural function in patients diagnosed with muscular dystrophy.
A major breakthrough in stem cell research occurred in Belgium in January 2014 when Saint-Luc Hospital in Brussels succeeded in using a technique developed by Saint-Luc Centre for Tissue and Cellular Therapy to use stem cells taken from a patient’s own fatty tissue to repair bones. The work was carried out under the guidance of Denis Dufrane, the director of the center. In the past, stem cells had been painfully extracted from a patient’s pelvis using a needle. The new technique allows physicians to take stem cells about the size of a sugar cube and grow them into a bone-like substance in a laboratory without using the traditional scaffold. The substance is then molded onto the patient’s fractured or diseased bones. The hospital established Novadip Biosciences to market the technique. In addition to treating patients in the emergency room who arrive with fractured bones and those with bone diseases, the technique has great potential for repairing bones of the elderly who suffer from deteriorating discs.
Significant Researchers
In 2008, University Hospital of Belgium discovered a technique that allows scientists to extract stem cells from embryos without having to destroy the fetus involved. This finding had major implications for the political debate over the ethics of stem cell research because it meant that researchers were not destroying potential life. Team leader Hilde Van de Velde, a clinical embryologist, found that if one cell was taken from an early-stage embryo consisting of only four cells, the other cells would continue to develop normally after being implanted in a woman’s uterus.
Catherine Verfaillie, a molecular biologist, is one of the most respected stem cell researchers in the world. In 1987, she left Belgium for the United States and spent years engaged in stem cell research at the University of Minnesota. In 1997, she began using gene therapy to treat leukemia patients. Two years later, she agreed to serve as the first director of the Stem Cell Institute at the University of Minnesota. In 2002, she became one of the first researchers in the world to recognize the pluripotent potential of adult stem cells found in the bone marrow of both humans and mice. Previous research had suggested that such cells were only capable of producing replicas of themselves. In 2006, Verfaillie returned to Belgium to become the head of the Belgium Institute for Stem Cell Research at the University of Leuven, where her major focus is on use of adult stem cells to generate new stem cell therapies.
Cedric Blanpain, who serves as the principal investigator at the Interdisciplinary Research Institute of the Université Libre de Bruxelles has developed an international reputation for his work on cancer stem cell research. He is involved in studying the development of multipotent progenitors during embryonic development, the use of adult stem cells in indentifying the lineage of cancer cells, and pinpointing the mechanisms that regulate the growth of stem cells in various forms of cancer. In 2010, Blanpain joined with two University of Cambridge professors, Michaela Frye and Duncan Odem, to sponsor the European Workshop of Skin Stem Cells. Major training sessions included Stem Cell Adhesion and Polarity, Signaling in Stem Cells, Mechanisms and Regulating Self-Renewal and Differentiation, Homeostasis of Skin Epidermis, and Skin Stem Cells and Cancer.
Etienne Sokal, a hepatic pediatrician at St. Luc University’s Institute for Experimental and Clinical Research, has been a pioneer in using stem cells to treat diseases of the liver. With funding from the government of the Waloon Region and from private donors, Sokal created Promethra Sokal to market HepaStem, which is used to drain a diseased liver. This procedure means that there is no need for a liver transplant.
Thierry Voet and Joris Vermeesch of the Center for Human Genetics at KU Leuven in Leuven, Belgium, joined a team of international scientists to study neurons in the human brain, finding that DNA is not identical in all neurons in the brain. These findings have major implications for treatment of brain disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.
Mayo Clinic Collaboration
In 2013, Cardio3 BioSciences received $5.5 million in regional government funds to produce the C-Cathez-intramyocardial injection catheter and the C-Cure Stem Cell treatment for treating patients with heart failure. The treatment had been developed at the Mayo Clinic’s Center of Regenerative Medicine in collaboration with Belgian researchers of the Cardiovascular Centre in Aalst, Belgium, and Cardio3 BioSciences. Before the procedure, stem cells are harvested from a patient’s hip, and the catheter is used to inject those stem cells into beating hearts. Since the catheter uses a curved needle with graded slots, it can target heart cells while limiting the loss of cells by preventing backflow. In early 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it had