Category Archives: Cell Medicine

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have discovered an innovative method to make an unlimited supply of healthy blood cells from the readily available cells that line blood vessels. This achievement marks the first time that any research group has generated such blood-forming stem cells.

This is a game-changing breakthrough that brings us closer not only to treat blood disorders, but also deciphering the complex biology of stem-cell self-renewal machinery, said senior author Dr. Shahin Rafii, director of the Ansary Stem Cell Institute, chief of the Division of Regenerative Medicine and the Arthur B. Belfer Professor at Weill Cornell Medicine.

This is exciting because it provides us with a path towards generating clinically useful quantities of normal stem cells for transplantation that may help us cure patients with genetic and acquired blood diseases, added co-senior author Dr. Joseph Scandura, an associate professor of medicine and scientific director of the Silver Myeloproliferative Neoplasms Center at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are long-lasting cells that mature into all types of blood cells: white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets. Billions of circulating blood cells do not survive long in the body and must be continuously replenished. When this does not happen, severe blood diseases, such as anemia, bleeding or life-threatening infections, can occur. A special property of HSCs is that they can also self-renew to form more HSCs. This property allows just a few thousand HSCs to produce all of the blood cells a person has throughout ones life.

This image shows reprogrammed hematopoietic stem cells (green) that are arising from mouse cells. These stem cells are developing close to a group of cells, called the vascular niche cells (gray), which provides them with the nurturing factors necessary for the reprogramming.

Researchers have long hoped to find a way to make the body produce healthy HSCs in order to cure these diseases. But this has never been accomplished, in part because scientists have been unable to engineer a nurturing environment within which stem cells can convert into new, long-lasting cellsuntil now.

In a paper published May 17 in Nature, Dr. Rafii and his colleagues demonstrate a way to efficiently convert cells that line all blood vessels, called vascular endothelial cells, into abundant, fully functioning HSCs that can be transplanted to yield a lifetime supply of new, healthy blood cells. The research team also discovered that specialized types of endothelial cells serve as that nurturing environment, known as vascular niche cells, and they choreograph the new converted HSCs self-renewal. This finding may solve one of the most longstanding questions in regenerative and reproductive medicine: How do stem cells constantly replenish their supply?

The research team showed in a 2014 Nature study that converting adult human vascular endothelial cells into hematopoietic cells was feasible. However, the team was unable to prove that they had generated true HSCs because human HSCs function and regenerative potential can only be approximated by transplanting the cells into mice, which dont truly mimic human biology.

To address this issue, the team applied their conversion approach to mouse blood marrow transplant models that are endowed with normal immune function and where definitive evidence for HSC potential could rigorously tested. The researchers took vascular endothelial cells isolated from readily accessible adult mice organs and instructed them to overproduce certain proteins associated with blood stem-cell function. These reprogrammed cells were grown and multiplied in co-culture with the engineered vascular niche. The reprogrammed HSCs were then transplanted as single cells with their progenies into mice that had been irradiated to destroy all of their blood forming and immune systems, and then monitored to see whether or not they would self-renew and produce healthy blood cells.

Study co-authors, from left: Dr. Joseph Scandura, Dr. Raphael Lis, Dr. Jason Butler, Dr. Michael Poulos, Balvir Kunar Jr., Chaitanya R. Badwe, Dr. Koji Shido, Dr. Zev Rozenwaks, Jose-Gabriel Barcia-Duran, Dr. Shahin Rafii and Dr. Jenny Xiang. Not pictured: Charles Karrasch, David Redmond, Dr. Will Schachterle, Dr. Michael Ginsberg, Dr. Arash Rafii. Photo credit: Michael Gutkin.

In collaboration withDr. Olivier Elemento, associate director of the HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud Institute for Computational Biomedicine, andDr. Jenny Xiang, the director of Genomics Services, Dr. Rafii and his team also showed that the reprogrammed HSCs and their differentiated progenies including white and redbloodscells, as well as the immune cells were endowed with the same genetic attributes to that of normal adult stem cells. These findings suggest that the reprogramming process results in the generation of true HSCs that havegeneticsignature thatarevery similar to normal adult HSCs.Remarkably, the conversion procedure yielded a plethora of transplantable HSCs that regenerated the entire blood system in mice for the duration of their lifespans, a phenomenon known as engraftment. We developed a fully-functioning and long-lasting blood system, said lead authorDr. Raphael Lis, an instructor in medicine and reproductive medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. In addition, the HSC-engrafted mice developed all of the working components of the immune systems. This is clinically important because the reprogrammed cells could be transplanted to allow patients to fight infections after marrow transplants, Dr. Lis said. The mice in the study went on to live normal-length lives and die natural deaths, with no sign of leukemia or any other blood disorders.

Study co-author Dr. Olivier Elemento. Photo credit: Roger Tully.

The Weill Cornell Medicine team is the first to achieve cellular reprogramming to create engraftable and authentic HSCs, which have been considered the holy grail of stem cell research. We think the difference is the vascular niche, said contributing authorDr. Jason Butler, an assistant professor of regenerative medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. Growing stem cells in the vascular niche puts them back into context, where they come from and multiply. We think this is why we were able to get stem cells capable of self-renewing.

If this method can be scaled up and applied to humans, it could have wide-ranging clinical implications. It might allow us to provide healthy stem cells to patients who need bone marrow donors but have no genetic match, Dr. Scandura said. It could lead to new ways to cure leukemia and myeloproliferative neoplasms, and may help us correct genetic defects that cause blood diseases like sickle-cell anemia.

More importantly, our vascular niche-stem-cell expansion model may be employed to clone the key unknown growth factors produced by this niche that are essential for self-perpetuation of stem cells, Dr. Rafii said. Identification of those factors could be important for unraveling the secrets of stem cells longevity and translating the potential of stem cell therapy to the clinical setting.

Additional study co-authors include Charles Karrasch, Dr. Michael Poulos, Balvir Kunar, David Redmond, Jose-Gabriel Barcia-Duran, Chaitanya Badwe, Koji Shido and Dr. Zev Rosenwaks of Weill Cornell Medicine; Dr. Will Schachterle, formerly of Weill Cornell Medicine, Dr. Arash Rafii of Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar; Dr. Michael Ginsberg of Angiocrine Bioscience; and Dr. Nancy Speck of the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.

Various study authors have relationships with Angiocrine Bioscience that are independent of Weill Cornell Medicine.

This study was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, grants NIH-R01 DK095039, HL119872, HL128158, HL115128, HL099997, CA204308, HL133021, HL119872, HL128158 and HL091724; U54 CA163167; and NIH-T32 HD060600.

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Weill Cornell Medicine Team Creates Self-Renewing Hematopoietic Stem Cells for Transplantation - Cornell Chronicle

Using antibodies to PD-1 or PD-L1 is one of the major advances in cancer immunotherapy, said Weissman, who is also the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor for Clinical Investigation in Cancer Research, director of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine and director of the Ludwig Center for Cancer Stem Cell Research and Medicine at Stanford. While most investigators accept the idea that anti-PD-1 and PD-L1 antibodies work by taking the brakes off of the T-cell attack on cancer cells, we have shown that there is a second mechanism that is also involved.

What Weissman and his colleagues discovered is that PD-1 activation also inhibits the anti-cancer activity of other immune cells called macrophages. Macrophages that infiltrate tumors are induced to create the PD-1 receptor on their surface, and when PD-1 or PD-L1 is blocked with antibodies, it prompts those macrophage cells to attack the cancer, Gordon said.

This mechanism is similar to that of another antibody studied in the Weissman lab: the antibody that blocks the protein CD47. Weissman and his colleagues showed that using anti-CD47 antibodies prompted macrophages to destroy cancer cells. The approach is now the subject of a small clinical trial in human patients.

As it stands, its unclear to what degree macrophages are responsible for the therapeutic success of the anti-PD-1 and anti-PD-L1 antibodies.

The practical implications of the discovery could be important, the researchers said. This could lead to novel therapies that are aimed at promoting either the T-cell component of the attack on cancer or promoting the macrophage component, Gordon said.

Another implication is that antibodies to PD-1 or PD-L1 may be more potent and broadly effective than previously thought. In order for T cells to attack cancer when you take the brakes off with antibodies, you need to start with a population of T cells that have learned to recognize specific cancer cells in the first place, Weissman said. Macrophage cells are part of the innate immune system, which means they should be able to recognize every kind of cancer in every patient.

Other Stanford co-authors of the study are associate professor of pathology Andrew Connolly, MD, PhD; visiting scholar Gregor Hutter, MD, PhD;instructor Rahul Sinha, PhD; postdoctoral scholars Roy Maute, PhD, Daniel Corey, MD, and Melissa McCracken, PhD; graduate students Benjamin Dulken, Benson George and Jonathan Tsai; and former graduate student Aaron Ring, MD, PhD.

The research was supported by the D.K. Ludwig Fund for Cancer Research, the A.P. Giannini Foundation, the Stanford Deans Fellowship, the National Institutes of Health (grant GM07365), the Swiss National Science Foundation and the National Center for Research Resources.

Weissman is a founder of the company Forty Seven Inc., which is sponsoring the clinical trial of the anti-CD47 antibody.

Stanfords departments of Pathology and of Developmental Biology also supported the work.

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Cancer therapy may work in unexpected way | News Center ... - Stanford Medical Center Report

Inside a yoga studio in midtown Kansas City, Ayurvedic medicine practitioner Sarah Kucera does a consultation for a client.

In some ways, the consultation isnt that different from a regular doctors checkup. Kucera asks about the patients health history, diet and exercise regimen while typing notes on a laptop.

But there are differences. The Ayurvedic remedies that Kucera prescribes are mostly plant-based things like herbs and oils which are thought to be beneficial to various parts of the body.

Ayurveda isnt typically used to treat critical illness or injury. Kucera explains that it focuses more on prevention and wellness.

Ayurveda potentially could be treating the source of the problem whereas within Western medicine, were often just treating the problem itself. Or the symptoms rather than the cause, Kucera says.

Kuceras remedies might be familiar to Kattesh Katti. Hes a University of Missouri professor of radiology and physics who got Ayurvedic treatments as a child.

When I was growing up in India, it was there in my DNA, literally, because Ive been fed with those medications, Katti says. Its all there in my body.

Even though his family used Ayurvedic medicine, they were skeptical when he began his current work. Katti is interested in how Ayurvedic knowledge and materials might be applied to cancer treatment.

Several of them they very carefully they commented, Kattesh, are you sure that you want to get into this medical modality? Katti says.

Ayurvedic medicine has shown promise in treating some conditions like inflammation and rheumatoid arthritis. But evidence and testing on its use for many other illnesses is lacking or fairly limited.

Katti isnt trying to destroy tumors with herbs. Instead, hes exploring how plant-based materials could enhance existing cancer treatments or make cancer treatments safer for patients.

Drugs that we use for treating different diseases particularly cancer they are pretty toxic, Katti says. Thats why they are so effective in killing cancer cells. But the bad news is that they kill normal cells and cancer cells almost indiscriminately.

One of Kattis projects is a liver cancer treatment method involving gum arabic. Thats sap from acacia trees that has a lot of uses in Ayurvedic medicine.

Katti hopes it can be used to enhance a tumor-destroying technique using tiny nanoparticles of gold thats been in development by other researchers for several years.

When inside cancer cells, these gold particles can essentially be zapped with a laser, which generates enough heat to destroy the cells from the inside out.

It may be a slow process. It may be an explosion, depending on how many nanoparticles we may have per cell. The higher number of nanoparticles per cell, the more heat you generate per cell, and maybe some cells would be exploding, Katti says.

Katti theorizes that using gum arabic as a coating for gold nanoparticles may enhance the effectiveness of this cancer treatment method and reduce its toxicity.

The human body is used to gum arabic for centuries, so the body doesnt think that having gum arabic in the body the body has to fight against it, Katti says. The body wont think like that.

In doing this work, Katti is bridging a big divide, and not just a cultural one.

Wendy Applequist, associate curator at the Missouri Botanical Garden in Saint Louis, studies plant-based folk medicines from around the world. She says much of Western medical research has been focused on isolating and studying single compounds. Plant-based medicines, by contrast, can be very complex.

Very frequently, plants dont have just one active ingredient; they have numerous active ingredients, Applequist says. So you cant pick out any one molecule, super concentrate it, put it in a pill and expect to have the same safety and efficacy. Frequently they work together synergistically, or inactive compounds increase the bioavailability of the active compounds.

Applequist says a split occurred in medicine in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and - especially in the United States it has only recently begun to mend.

A cultural divide opened up between the medical profession and people who still remembered traditional herbal approaches. And in just the past couple of decades, theres really been more interest in drawing those together, Applequist says.

Kattis research is still in the very early stages of testing, but hes hopeful he can bridge millennia of medicinal knowledge to someday reduce cancers grim toll.

The last 5,000 years is all about formulations, is all about family secrets, is all about anecdotal evidence, Katti says. We are about to reinvent that modality but in ways that our formulations are scientifically verifiable.

Alex Smith is a health reporter for KCUR. You can reach him on Twitter @AlexSmithKCUR

Read more from the original source:
MU Researcher Explores Cancer Treatments Inspired By Traditional Indian Medicine - KCUR

In 2004 California ballot measure Proposition 71 was passed, granting $3 billion ($6 billion including interest) in state funds to support politically controversial embryonic stem cell research in California at a time when the federal government was restricting this research. A public agency was established, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, to dole out this money across California universities, medical research institutions and biotech companies. During the election campaign, California voters were assured of breakthroughs and cures for conditions like Parkinsons and spinal cord paralysis through celebrity endorsements featuring actors, Nobel prize winners and other notables. Prop. 71 money is dwindling and there is talk about putting a $5 billion renewal initiative on the ballot. So its reasonable to ask what California taxpayers got out of this deal over the past 13 years. Sadly, CIRM hasnt generated a single approved medical treatment. Through September 2016, CIRM has funded only three stem cell research projects that have reached Phase 3 clinical trials (the final step before FDA marketing approval). One of these trials was terminated and the other two are still recruiting patients and are not expected to report out for several years. During the same time, despite embryonic stem cell research restrictions, the federal National Institutes of Health has funded 50 stem cell research projects in Phase 3 trials. The NIH cost per Phase 3 research trial has been five times lower than the state program. Nearly half of the state funding has gone to research infrastructure rather than to actual research.

There also appears to have been blatant conflicts of interest in CIRM research awards. Around 80 percent of CIRM grants have gone to institutions represented on its board of directors. One out of seven CIRM research dollars has gone to Stanford University. One awardee, StemCells Inc., was co-founded by Irving Weissman, Stanfords stem cell program director. StemCells received at least $40 million from CIRM before going belly up. The CIRM board initially turned down a $20 million funding proposal to StemCells, until Bob Klein, the Northern California real estate investor who drafted Prop. 71 and was the first chairman of CIRMs governing board, was reported to have pressured the board to reverse that decision. CIRMs President Alan Trounson abruptly resigned in October 2013, joined the board of StemCells one week later, and then received $435,000 in cash and stocks from them before the company folded last year.

Does it make sense for California taxpayers to fund biotechnology research? Perhaps. A good case can be made that public investments in basic biotechnology infrastructure can have enormous benefits to Californias economy and job growth while generating significant improvements in human health. But public funding should have broader scope and flexibility to go after all promising new technological advances, not just current scientific fads or political controversies. Public funds should be awarded with rigorous oversight and accountability. There should be a sharp line between basic research, which requires public funding and is unlikely to yield short-term tangible cures, despite what celebrity actors say, and getting new medicines to market. Promising new treatments are already well-funded through private venture capital funds and biotech companies, who are much better at picking winners and losers than California taxpayers.

By not providing adequate oversight over potential conflicts of interest and not holding CIRM funding recipients to the same rigorous standards as NIH grant recipients, CIRMs 13 year record of zero new medicines for $6 billion in taxpayer funds is not an experiment that the voters should regenerate at the ballot box.

Joel W. Hay is a professor of Health Economics and Policy at the University of Southern California.

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Regenerating medical research payouts? - OCRegister

Stem cells preserve their identities after cell division by using a series of protein bookmarks on their genes, according to new research published by scientists at Weill Cornell Medicine. The results may further the understanding of how certain diseases like cancer develop and could have broad clinical implications for preventing disease.

Pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) are cells that have the ability to transform into any kind of cell in the body. What type of cell each stem cell becomes called cell identity is determined by a tightly-controlled system regulated by various proteins. As these cells divide by mitosis, each so-called daughter cell produced should be the same type as its cell of origin. But during mitosis the control system is briefly disrupted, creating a window in which a cell can forget its identity and transform into a different kind of cell.

Dr. Effie Apostolou

If a cell doesnt remember what its supposed to be, it can transform into something else, even a malignant cell, saysDr. Effie Apostolou, an assistant professor of molecular biology in medicine and member of theSandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Centerat Weill Cornell Medicine. Understanding how this process is controlled is fundamental to understanding how many diseases arise.

In a paper published May 16 in Cell Reports, Dr. Apostolou and her team found that cell identity is preserved in pluripotent stem cells through a series of small modifications in proteins known as bookmarks on the cells genes. These bookmarks do not change during mitosis. So when the cell resumes its functions, such as transcription, after mitosis, this bookmark serves as a checkpoint to make sure that this process happens properly, Dr. Apostolou said. In this way, PSCs ensure that daughter cells are the same as their mother cells.

The researchers identified some proteins that were possible candidates for bookmarks and then removed those proteins from cells during the critical window in mitosis. If indeed this time window and the presence of these proteins are critical during mitosis, then the cell identity will be challenged, Dr. Apostolou said.

They found that when these mitotic bookmarks were degraded in PSCs, the cells were unable to maintain their identities: they did not reliably divide into the same kind of cell generation after generation. This tells us that these bookmarks are an important mechanism for keeping stem cells working properly, Dr. Apostolou said.

Because pluripotent stem cells hold great promise for prevention and treatment of many diseases, this finding is key, she said. Understanding cell identity is fundamental to understanding disease, as many, including cancer and some neurological diseases, are the result of cell identity being lost.

Mitosis can be either a crisis for cell identity or an opportunity for a new identity to arise she said. If we understand more about how cells maintain their identities during this process, we will better understand tumor formation and we may even be able to push stem cells into an identity that is therapeutically relevant for a given disease.

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Bookmarks on Stem Cell Genes Preserve Cell Identity - Cornell Chronicle

May 16, 2017 Single cell focus reveals hidden cancer cells. Credit: Shutterstock

Researchers have found a way to identify rogue cancer cells which survive treatment after the rest of the tumour is destroyed, by using a new technique that enables them to identify and characterise individual cancer cells.

Recent breakthroughs are revolutionising cancer treatment, enabling doctors to personalise chemotherapy for each patient. However, although these new treatments are often highly effective, all too often the cancer grows back, eventually causing relapse.

An international research team, led by Professors Adam Mead and Sten Eirik Jacobsen at the University of Oxford and Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, have found a way to identify rogue cancer cells which survive treatment after the rest of the tumour is destroyed, by using a new technique that enables them to identify and characterise individual cancer cells.

Professor Adam Mead of Oxford University's Radcliffe Department of Medicine, said: 'It is increasingly recognised that tumours contain a variety of different cell types, including so-called cancer stem cells, that drive the growth and relapse of a patient's cancer. These cells can be very rare and extremely difficult to find after treatment as they become hidden within the normal tissue.

'We used a new genetic technique to identify and analyse single cancer stem cells in leukaemia patients before and after treatment. We found that even in individual cases of leukaemia, there are various types of cancer stem cell that respond differently to the treatment. A small number of these cells are highly resistant to the treatment and are likely to be responsible for disease recurrence when the treatment is stopped. Our research allowed us uniquely to analyse these crucial cells that evade treatment so that we might learn how to more effectively eradicate them.

'This technique could be adapted to analyse a range of different cancers to help predict both the likely response to treatment, and the risk of the disease returning in the future. This should eventually enable treatment to be tailored to target each and every type of cancer stem cell that may be present.'

Molecularly targeted therapies for cancer frequently induce impressive remissions, however, complete disease elimination remains rare, and patients remain at risk of disease relapse. At a cellular level this is likely to reflect differences between individual cancer cells, so-called intratumoural heterogeneity, which underlies this differential response to treatment.

The researchers from the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford's Radcliffe Department of Medicine used a technique called single-cell analysis to study thousands of individual cancer cells in a type of blood cancer called chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) before and after treatment. Being able to identify each subpopulation using this single cell analysis technique will be an important step towards tailoring treatment to each patient.

Explore further: Proportion of cancer stem cells can increase over the course of cancer treatment

More information: Alice Giustacchini et al. Single-cell transcriptomics uncovers distinct molecular signatures of stem cells in chronic myeloid leukemia, Nature Medicine (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nm.4336

Stem cells in the bone marrow constantly give rise to new blood cells and are responsible for the maintenance of all vital blood components. However, errors during proliferation can change stem cell properties and cause tumours ...

Existing chemotherapy approaches treat cancer by targeting cells that are actively multiplying and have a high metabolic rate. However, cancer stem cells can escape this targeting, leading to chemotherapy-resistant cancer ...

The gene mutations driving cancer have been tracked for the first time in patients back to a distinct set of cells at the root of cancer cancer stem cells. The international research team, led by scientists at the University ...

A new study at the University of York has shown that a standard hormone supplement, used to boost energy levels in prostate cancer patients following radiotherapy, could potentially increase the chances of the cancer returning.

New research is shedding light on how leukaemia cells can survive cancer treatment, suggesting new possibilities for stopping them in their tracks.

A new method to take the DNA fingerprint of individual cancer cells is uncovering the true extent of cancer's genetic diversity, new research reveals.

Researchers have found a way to identify rogue cancer cells which survive treatment after the rest of the tumour is destroyed, by using a new technique that enables them to identify and characterise individual cancer cells.

Cells are constantly turning proteins on and off via molecular switchesphosphate moleculesthat have become common drug targets. in a new study, lung cancer tumors were prevented in mice by a novel small molecule that ...

A study recently published in Nature Communications shows that breast cancer cells undergo a stiffening state prior to becoming malignant. The discovery, made by a research team led by Florence Janody, from Instituto Gulbenkian ...

For women who miss a breast screening appointment, giving a fixed date and time for a new appointment could improve poor attendance and be a cost-effective way to shift national participation trends, according to an analysis ...

'Tumour-trained' immune cells - which have the potential to kill cancer cells - have been seen moving from one tumour to another for the first time. The new findings, which were uncovered by scientists at Australia's Garvan ...

New diagnoses for two types of skin cancer increased in recent years, according to a Mayo Clinic-led team of researchers.

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Single cell focus reveals hidden cancer cells - Medical Xpress

Numerous studies have suggested that tomatoes have anti-cancer properties. A new study provides further evidence of this, after finding that whole tomato extract has the potential to treat and even prevent stomach cancer.

Researchers from the United States and Italy found that whole extracts from two varieties of tomato - San Marzano and Corbarino - blocked the growth of stomach cancer cells and dampened their malignant characteristics.

Study co-author Prof. Antonio Giordano, director of the Sbarro Institute for Molecular Medicine at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA, and colleagues recently reported their findings in the Journal of Cellular Physiology.

According to the American Cancer Society, there will be around 28,000 cases of stomach cancer diagnosed in the U.S. this year.

Also referred to as gastric cancer, stomach cancer is most common among older adults; around 60 percent of adults diagnosed with the disease are aged 65 or older.

Previous studies have suggested that compounds found in tomatoes - such as lycopene, a carotenoid that gives tomatoes their red color - may help to fight cancer.

However, Prof. Giordano and colleagues note that few studies have investigated the anti-cancer effects of whole tomatoes - a research gap they set out to address with their new study.

To reach their findings, the researchers tested the effects of whole extracts from San Marzano and Corbarino tomatoes on stomach cancer cell lines.

They found that each extract not only halted the growth of gastric cancer cells, but they also interfered with cell migration - whereby cancer cells begin to move away from the primary tumor to invade surrounding tissues - and led to cancer cell death.

Furthermore, the researchers found that the anti-cancer effects of the tomato extracts were not down to one particular compound.

"Their anti-tumoral effect seem not related to specific components, such as lycopene, but rather suggest that tomatoes should be considered in their entirety," says study co-author Daniela Barone, of the Oncology Research Center of Mercogliano in Italy.

According to the researchers, their findings indicate that whole tomato extracts may be useful for the prevention and treatment of stomach cancer.

"Our results prompt further assessment of the potential use of specific nutrients not only in the cancer prevention setting but also as a supportive strategy along with conventional therapies."

Prof. Antonio Giordano

The team notes that certain varieties of tomatoes may have different effects on cancer cells, something which future studies should investigate.

Learn how the consumption of alcohol and processed meat may raise the risk of stomach cancer.

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Whole tomato extract may prevent, treat stomach cancer - Medical News Today

Grammy award winning recording artist Bilal with his son Ramzee, who suffers from Sickle Cell, at Sickle Cell Thalassemia Patients Network (SCTPN) in Brooklyn, NY. Karole Collier

Before getting into music professionally, you were actually on the path to a very different career in the medical field. What brought about the change in your career path?

Nana Kwabena: I don't come from a musical family. I was actually raised to become a doctor and I was pre-med in college. That was the path that my parents wanted me to take. As much as my parents pushed me down this path, my mom knew that I was going to be a musician. They were all just in denial about it because being a musician was taboo as a first-gen Ghanaian-American.

I went through school with two different lives. On one hand I'm studying to become a doctor with the idea of using that expertise to treat sickle cell disease by day, but then by night I was living a whole different life. I would be in Philly and have about 30 different Philly rappers in the room, their own Wu-Tang if you will, and I'm producing beats and then I have to say alright guys it's six in the morning and I'm going to get an hour of sleep and then go take organic chemistry.

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I remember graduating from UPenn [University of Pennsylvania] and thinking that these two things are getting too big and something's got to give. I never quite knew how to make them work in concert with each other, so what do you do? You buy time.

I deferred my acceptance to George Washington University, to the Milken School of Public Health with the hopes of making it in music. I moved to New York and gave myself a year with the idea that if that didn't work out, I was going to go back and continue pursuing the medical field. In my first year in New York I wrote a song with John Legend and thought maybe I should continue.

In 2011, when you were just starting off in the music industry, you lost your younger brother Kwame to sickle cell disease. How did that experience mobilize you to bring your background in the medical field and music together in order to raise awareness about the disease?

All of a sudden these two halves of my life (music and medicine) that always felt in conflict with each other, once my brother passed they became one. They became the yin and yang to each other. Music and the medicine. Music was the medicine. So out of that I created a non- profit called AllOneBlood with the idea to change the conversation around sickle cell disease.

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My brother Kwame had conviction and he had passion and that was always his default and it didn't matter who you were. He was just always unapologetic about his own light and what he believed in. So when he passed I think that I inherited that idea of really just being able to be audacious, regardless of what people think you're supposed to be or the limitations you may have.

Death really, really clarifies things. It puts life in perspective. It gave me the ability to realize that sickle cell did not have to be a forgotten disease and we could educate people and rally around the cause for a cure.

As someone who suffers from sickle cell disease, what would you say are some of the major misconceptions that people have about it? How is your organization AllOneBlood working to help change that?

I think sickle cell is a disease that within the context of America feels like a black disease, or it only affects black people and because of that it kind of becomes a disease that gets less attention. There are diseases that affect far less people in number and have ten times the budget for their national organizations.

I think there are a lot of misconceptions around the disease or thoughts around the disease that make people feel like if they don't suffer from it, then they can't support it. There are many faces to sickle cell disease and a lot of people don't know that. What AllOneBlood tries to do is kind of just change the conversation around the disease and kind of open up the spectrum to show that on a global level when you remove this national lens you see that it affects people of all races.

There's also this stigma with chronic disease where we feel like when you have these things you have to hide it. I studied abroad in Ghana while in college and I did a research study looking at elementary aged children that had sickle cell disease and whether or not they disclosed or concealed having the disease.

There were many kids that had sickle cell disease and they would endure sickle cell pain crisis, which are like terrible, awful pain attacks. It's the kind of pain that I have had as an adult and have been screaming to the top of my lungs, so imagine a kid dealing with this. These children would be at home having that level of pain and would go into a closet in their bedroom and close the door where they would stay and sob, not telling their parents. Why? It was because they didn't want to go to the hospital and miss school the next day and have people say oh that person missing might be a 'sickler'.

I wanted the conversation around the disease to go beyond the notion that this is something that is debilitating or that this is something that cripples us and it be looked at as a feature. I decided that I would let everyone and anyone know that I have sickle cell. When you can be in tune with the things that make you different it actually makes you stronger. It makes you powerful.

In your opinion, what role can music play in creating change and what responsibility do music and musicians have to use their art to effect change?

Music is one of the biggest and easiest and most effective ways to connect people that would otherwise not be connected to each other.

I've always appreciated artists' who made art that wasn't just art for art's sake. It was art that actually had real tangible impact on people's lives. I grew up listening to Bob Marley, Michael Jackson, Fela Kuti and Tupac. These were people for me that if you only made the rubric about creatives then they were the best. But, if you also open up the rubric and judge them in terms of the real impact they had on the world, these are people whose music shifted the entire world.

That's what I want to use music for. I don't want to just use music to be someone that's like, yeah we'll just make dope beats and have fun and it will be an escape to the harsh realities of the world.

I want it to be a tool that deals with the harsh realities of the world. That to me is the motto that I live by and I've always loved the ability music has to have that kind of influence.

It's actually bigger than music, but the music is a very strong vehicle to help effect real change in people's lives. And, I've had the pleasure of working with not only creative people and really talented people in that way, but some of the best and greatest spirits of our generation as well.

What are some things you do that you help manage sickle cell disease and what keeps you motivated?

Your general health and general well-being has a large effect on how you deal with sickle cell and whether or not you have attacks. Your nutrition is the biggest thing. If you can have a healthy diet and stay away from too much processed food as well as properly hydrate yourself and also exercise, it is so important. These are some of the things that I do. Being in a positive mental space is also extremely important.

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Although there are some limitations due to sickle cell disease I encourage those who also have the disease to push themselves to live a wholesome life and not allow it to be something that stops your from living your dreams or simply living.

What keeps me motivated is being around people and finding inspiration that keeps that torch inside of me fueled. To not feel anything at all is a dangerous thing and I spend most of my life trying to guard my own fire, protect my fire and then add to that fire.

John Legend visiting the Sickle Cell Pediatrics unit at the Children's Hospital Los Angeles with AllOneBlood. He spent time and spoke with the kids who were getting treatment, surprising them with a performance in between rounds of treatment and therapy. Corwin Levi

What is the progress you have seen in terms of awareness and education about sickle cell since you started AllOneBlood in 2012?

I think that there have been tremendous strides made recently where there are treatments that could cure the disease, but not a lot of people know about them. However, the beauty of this is that the disease is actually curable in within our lifetime.

AllOneBlood partnered Universityof Illinois Medical School, where doctors recently cured sickle cell disease in 16 of 19 patients without using traditional chemotherapy in 2016. This year, we're working to raise funds so that more families who qualify for the treatment can be covered in addition to helping families across the country with other care related expenses.

My goal is to make it (a cure) a reality and that's what my life is dedicated to. My life is literally using music as the vehicle to cure sickle cell disease off the planet. I really have two goals that's one of them. The second is building the bridges throughout the African diaspora.

I'm Ghanaian-American and I really have this belief that Africa has this desire for all of its children to be able to recognize Africa no matter the time goes by. Africa has been erased and has been consistently been erased from history of its contributions to the entire world. My life is about making sure that it gets the recognition that it deserves.

Nana Kwabena Oz Shaw

What's next for AllOneBlood and what can we expect from you as far as new music projects this year?

We are working on our inaugural fundraiser gala where we will bring all our partners together to share information and enjoy performances that will contribute to making a difference. Right now we are in the planning phases of that and we really look forward to that. That's what's next for AllOneBlood in particular.

Outside of that, creatively, more music is on the way. I'm working on a couple of projects. Janelle's getting ready to drop what I actually believe is going to be her best album, which I've had the pleasure of being involved with. Jidenna and I are working on album two, there's also a short film. There's a lot going on, but I'm just trying to live the most fully expressed life and be on the highest vibration as long as I possibly can.

For more information on the non-profit All One Blood, please visit

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Mixing Music and Medicine: Meet Grammy-Nominated Producer ... - NBCNews.com

May 12, 2017

A new study from Lund University in Sweden shows that the behaviour of stem cells in plants and animals is surprisingly similar. The researchers were able to produce mathematical equations that reveal very small differences in the behaviour of the proteins. The results can hopefully be used in stem cell research involving humans.

"The plant and animal kingdoms were separated through evolution more than 1.6 billion years ago. It is surprising that the interactions between the handful of key genes that control the fate of each stem cell are so similar in both cases", says Carsten Peterson, professor at the Faculty of Science at Lund University.

Carsten Peterson is one of the researchers behind the recent study on differences and similarities between animal and plant stem cells. With a background in theoretical physics, he and his colleagues have tackled the stem cells from a different perspective, which proved successful.

By formulating mathematical equations, the researchers have performed a detailed study of the proteins that are central to the stem cells in mammals and plants. The proteins are linked to the genes that control the stem cells. In particular, the researchers have studied how these proteins mutually affect one another through interaction as the cells evolve.

"Although the proteins in mammalian and plant stem cells are very different when studied separately, there are major similarities in the ways in which they interact, that is, how they strengthen or weaken each other", says Carsten Peterson.

Stem cells are a hot topic in medical contexts, especially when it comes to cancer and autoimmune diseases. A stem cell is capable of evolving into several different types of cells and is thus a sort of mother cell to all of the body's specialised cell types. In animals, these specialised cells can never return to a stem cell state on their own. In plants, however, they can.

"Specialised cells of plants can return to being stem cells without external manipulation. In the plant world, there is a natural reprogramming process", says Carsten Peterson.

The mathematical equations show that very small differences are sufficient to explain why plant cells are so flexible while cells of mammals require artificial reprogramming to return to a stem cell state.

"When cells are influenced externally artificially for animals or naturally for plants the minor differences in interaction play a greater role, and the differences appear to be of greater significance", says Carsten Peterson.

He believes that a lot of work remains with regard to the efficiency of reprogramming of animal cells and therefore hopes that insights from the plant world can contribute. The current study provides clues about why it is so much easier to make a cell go back to being a stem cell in plants compared to mammals.

Reprogramming is a frequently used word in stem cell contexts today, ever since the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 2012. One of the prize winners, Shinya Yamanaka, had demonstrated how to externally manipulate cells to return to an embryonic stem cell state by increasing the concentration of certain proteins. Turning back the clock this way has enormous potential in clinical contexts. For example, on an individual basis, skin cells can be reprogrammed into embryonic stem cells, and be made into desired cell types by manipulating certain proteins. This process is known as regenerative medicine.

The study was recently published in the scientific journal PLoS ONE.

Explore further: Study shows adipose stem cells may be the cell of choice for therapeutic applications

More information: Victor Olariu et al. Different reprogramming propensities in plants and mammals: Are small variations in the core network wirings responsible?, PLOS ONE (2017). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0175251

Journal reference: PLoS ONE

Provided by: Lund University

An international team of researchers, funded by Morris Animal Foundation, has shown that adipose (fat) stem cells might be the preferred stem cell type for use in canine therapeutic applications, including orthopedic diseases ...

Freiburg plant biologist Prof. Dr. Thomas Laux and his research group have published an article in the journal Developmental Cell presenting initial findings on how shoot stem cells in plants form during embryogenesis, the ...

Scientists have discovered the gene essential for chemically reprogramming human amniotic stem cells into a more versatile state similar to embryonic stem cells, in research led by UCL and Heinrich Heine University.

A protein that stays attached on chromosomes during cell division plays a critical role in determining the type of cell that stem cells can become. The discovery, made by EPFL scientists, has significant implications for ...

Researchers from the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Research Institute of Physical Chemical Medicine and Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) have concluded that reprogramming does not create differences ...

Stem cells are typically thought to have the intrinsic ability to generate or replace specialized cells. However, a team of biologists at NYU showed that regenerating plants can naturally reconstitute their stem cells from ...

New lung "organoids"tiny 3-D structures that mimic features of a full-sized lunghave been created from human pluripotent stem cells by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). The team used the organoids ...

University of Dundee scientists have solved a mystery concerning one of the most fundamental processes in cell biology, in a new discovery that they hope may help to tackle cancer one day.

A recent research paper in the Journal of Heredity reveals that there are three sub-species of snow leopard. Until now, researchers had assumed this species, Panthera uncia, was monotypic.

Adult stem cells have the ability to transform into many types of cells, but tracing the path individual stem cells follow as they mature and identifying the molecules that trigger these fateful decisions are difficult in ...

Leading hospital "superbugs," known as the enterococci, arose from an ancestor that dates back 450 million yearsabout the time when animals were first crawling onto land (and well before the age of dinosaurs), according ...

In their quest to replicate themselves, viruses have gotten awfully good at tricking human cells into pumping out viral proteins. That's why scientists have been working to use viruses as forces for good: to deliver useful ...

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Stem cells in plants and animals behave surprisingly similarly - Phys.Org

XIANGTAN, China, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --On average there are over 200 billion cell divisions going on in the body every day and the human body does a remarkable job ensuring that this process goes without error, however as we age and are exposed to different environmental stresses the machinery involved in cell division can wear down. If cell division is not regulated properly we can have too much cell division, resulting in excessive cell growth, this phenomenon is the underlying mechanism of cancer and how tumors are produced. Cancer cells generated during abnormal cell division often have little to no differences in composition making treatment excessively difficult. Modern day medicine and medical procedures work by targeting all cells in the region the cancerous tumor has arisen, this kills both cancer and non-cancer cells leaving extensive side effects. Sciencedaily published research news on how Chinese medicine kills cancer cells from University of Adelaide. New research in therapeutics for cancer revolves around targeting specific cancer cells.Dr. Xinping Song from the 3D Urology and Prostate Clinic in China is in one lab looking to target these cells specifically. Research from the 3D prostate clinic has shown that ancient Chinese medicines could be a novel and new prostate cancer treatment.

Researchers from Yale University and Columbia University found that triptolide effectively triggers cancer cell apoptosis. Research out of the 3D Prostate treatment has been geared towards using ancient traditional Herbal medicine for the apoptosis of cancer cells while leaving all other cells untouched. Two ancient Chinese medicines investigated by the 3D clinic lab include elemene emulsifications from rhizoma curcumae and ginseng. Principle results from the Dr. Xinping Song show that elemene could be a tumor suppressor, whereas ginseng shows promise in the recovery of patients after cancer cells have been eliminated.

The 3d prostate clinic concludes that the use of active ingredients in traditional Chinese medicines with or without the conjunction of Western medicine is a promising method to treat cancer induced tumors. Pharmacological studies still need to be done to understand any drug interactions/side effects that ancient Chinese medicine may have when paired with western pharmaceuticals, however, the research from the 3D treatments shows that there are ways to treat cancer without killing non-cancerous cells and reducing side effects.

Contact: Alisa Wang +86-186-73216429 prostatecure3d(at)gmail.com

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dr-xinping-song-new-prostate-natural-treatment-investigates-effects-of-traditional-chinese-medicine-on-cancer-300456424.html

SOURCE 3D Urology and Prostate Clinic

Excerpt from:
Dr. Xinping Song New prostate Natural treatment Investigates Effects of Traditional Chinese Medicine on Cancer - PR Newswire (press release)