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Cuba to repair organs and tissue
using
gene injections
• A group of scientists are working on a
growth factor
capable of developing blood
vessels
BY
LILLIAM RIERA —Granma International staff
writer—
THE development and
level reached by Cuban biotechnology has allowed
the island’s scientists to work on projects that
could be considered among the most advanced in the
world. These include so-called gene therapy,
consisting of injecting high-quality human genes
into the body to stimulate the rapid repair of
different injuries, thus contributing to the
body’s optimum performance.
Professor Noel
González is considered the godfather of Cuban
heart surgery — he carried out the island’s first
heart transplant in 1985. He informed Granma
International that “a group of specialists
from Havana’s Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital plus
scientists from the Genetic Engineering and
Biotechnology Center (CIGB) are working to produce
a growth factor capable of developing blood
vessels to strengthen those damaged by
arteriosclerosis, thus aiding recovery from
cardiac injury.”
He revealed that it
may just “be a question of months before we begin
injecting the growth factor using vascular
endothelium (the superficial tissue found in the
inside of blood vessels) — isolated by the CIGB
team and already tested on animals — in patients
who have damage to that area.”
Gene therapy “can be
extremely useful for treating other diseases such
as Alzheimer’s and diabetes,” explained Dr.
González, who is also president of the island’s
Bioethical Medicine Commission. There are 22
genetic diseases that can be helped in this
way.
In reply to a
question on human cloning, he unhesitatingly
responded:
“We have no problem
if it’s developed for therapeutic ends because if
we didn’t do so then it would be like returning to
the Middle Ages, but I don’t agree with using it
for reproduction, although I wouldn’t want to
encourage a ban on anything.”
CLONED ORGANS FOR
IMPLANTS ARE A NECESSITY
Therapeutic cloning
allows embryos to be used in what are known as
mother cells that are capable of growing and
converting into others, thus replacing any type of
tissue.
For this to be
achieved, González has no qualms about its
usefulness for laboratory-produced organs than can
be implanted in patients suffering from certain
diseases, bearing in mind that there are
insufficient organ donations in the
world.
He explained that the
United States, for example, has 300 million
inhabitants, “around 20,000 of whom are awaiting
heart transplants, but the number of donors is
between 2,000-2,500.” Cuba however has more than
11 million inhabitants, with a waiting list of
“perhaps 150-200 patients.”
The experienced
specialist regards “organ donations as a partial
solution.” The use of gene therapy is on the
increase and, in the long term, cloning for
therapeutic ends is “a necessity.” Cuban health
care is run on the premise that “we should have
access to everything, even if it might seem very
ambitious,” he pointed out.
During our
conversation, González recalled his early heart
surgery experiences in 1955-56 “when the public
health budget was absurdly low, fraud and losses
were rampant, and private institutions had no
resources for research without an immediate
future.”
However in 1967,
almost seven years after the Revolution triumphed
and the world’s first heart transplant took place,
“we were already working on it here, although it
was still at the theoretical stage,” he stated
proudly.
He tells us that
after 1968, the team he led “entered the
experimental phase,” culminating “in the country’s
first successful heart transplant” in 1985.
Today, with nearly 25
years dedicated to this human task, Dr. González
is more convinced than ever that in the future —
that many envisage will arrive in 10 years’ time —
“science will be in a position to produce a heart
using biological methods.”
As an epilogue to a
brief but interesting conversation, González
couldn’t refrain from commenting on the fact that
“we may be a Third World country, but we have
First World diseases ”such as cancer and heart
problems. But, the most interesting aspect “is
that we are fighting them using First World
theoretical resources and Cuban health system
practices.”
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