Stem Cells: are they the future in treating injuries in racehorses?

By Niki Luciani
First Published: 05 February 2010 - Issue Number: 15

I was asked to write this article the day before a child on a bicycle plowed into me, writes Niki Luciani (née Sweetnam), severing the tendon in my right leg. While human beings can be encased in plaster and given a set of crutches to hobble about on for a few months, horses cannot.

Forty-eight hours after my accident I heard of a man in Greece who had suffered multiple heart problems and as a result had to have a special pump implanted in his heart to circulate the blood necessary to keep him alive. The medical team then injected stem cells into the muscle tissue to encourage repair so that the heart would eventually regain sufficient strength enough to function properly again.
An Italian research team has just published a pioneering study of how equine stem cells can best be isolated, cultured and subsequently subdivided for diverse usage to best advance current veterinary treatments for the horse. Equine theriogenologist Professor Gaetano Mari, from the University of Bologna, leads a nine-strong team of specialists who are conducting research in an area of veterinary medicine which is rapidly changing the way equine injuries are treated, and, despite ethical and moral issues surrounding the use of human stem cells, is also rapidly changing the face of human medicine. Their research is being funded by the MIUR (Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca), which is the Italian Ministry for Education and Research.
While traditional medicine has been based on improving surgical techniques and trialing and refining the use of drugs, stem cell therapy was first used back in the 1950s when human bone marrow transplants were trialed to cure leukemia sufferers. Stem cell therapy can be defined as the stimulation of previously irreparable organs to heal themselv...

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