When stem cell therapy goes astray it often does so in a dramatic way. A failed stem cell treatment, intended to cure paralysis, left a woman with a mucus-secreting nose growing on her back.
About 11 years ago an 18-year-old woman sustained a complete spinal cord injury at T-10 and 11. After three years, during which time she was a paraplegic, she and her doctors decided to try an experimental treatment—a stem cell implantation at the site of her spinal injury.
The cells they injected were olfactory mucosal cells. Eight years after the stem cell implantation she developed pain in her back. When doctors investigated they found an intramedullary spinal cord mass at the site of the cell implantation. This required resection. Intraoperative findings revealed an expanded spinal cord with a multicystic mass containing large amounts of thick mucus-like material.
Histological examination revealed that the mass was composed of cysts lined by respiratory epithelium, submucosal glands and goblet cells. Brian Dlouhy, M.D., neurosurgeon at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, removed and investigated the growth and later reported on his experience in a paper published in the Journal of Neurosurgery Spine.
Human trials of this sort of stem cells therapy have been ongoing for some time. As many as 140 people have experienced this type of stem cell therapy with varying results. Some individuals suffering from paralysis have regained a degree of sensation while one person’s paralysis worsened. Jean Peduzzi-Nelson, Ph.D., of Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, said the problem of the growth of a nose on the injection site has occurred in less than 1% of those who have been injected with olfactory mucosal cells.
A fault of the study may be the fact that the therapy was not monitored for a long enough period of time.
