Category Archives: Cell Medicine

Science Daily

New tools to study the origin of embryonic stem cells Science Daily A few years ago, it was discovered that there are two stages for human pluripotent stem cells, corresponding to the pre-implanted and post-implanted embryonic cells. Although the classical stem cells used in regenerative medicine are isolated from the ... Stem cell treatments can go wrongJamaica Observer Stem Cells Show Mixed Results for Impotence After Prostate SurgeryNBCNews.com Sunrise stem cell clinic behind blindness cases is largely unregulatedConcord Register EIN News (press release) -IFLScience -EurekAlert (press release) all 65 news articles »

Read the rest here:
New tools to study the origin of embryonic stem cells - Science Daily

GARY Immortality comes with a catch. Something may be taken without your say. Even your loved ones wont learn about it until decades later.

So it was for the family of Henrietta Lacks, a poor black tobacco farmer. But theyre making up now.

In 1951, doctors removed cells from Lacks cancer-stricken body without her knowledge or permission. Generations later, those cells continue to be valuable tools in biomedical research.

Bad things happen to good people, so great things can be done, said Veronica Robinson, Lacks great-granddaughter. You can be part of science and see its not all that bad.

Robinson and Shirley Lacks, Henrietta Lacks daughter-in-law, addressed this collision of medicine, ethics, and race Wednesday at Indiana University Northwest. The Lacks family legacy, Robinson said, is not about what happened, but how we overcame it.

With recognition for Henrietta Lacks now coming nationally, Shirley Lacks noted, Henrietta has helped all mankind. Theres not one person who hasnt been touched or doesnt know someone touched by the HeLa cell.

Henrietta Lacks, who died in 1951 at age 31, was the unwitting donor of cells from a cancerous tumor biopsied during treatment for cervical cancer at Baltimores Johns Hopkins Hospital. Of the two samples removed from Lacks cervix, one was healthy tissue, but the other sample was cancerous. Dr. George Otto Gey, a cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins, cultured the cancerous sample into what became known as the HeLa immortal cell line.

HeLa has since been used in the polio vaccine, gene mapping, and in vitro fertilization research benefiting countless numbers of patients.

Although family members did not learn of their matriarchs contribution until 1975, today they are sharing Henrietta Lacks story, which has also been chronicled in the best-selling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. An HBO movie about Lacks starring Oprah Winfrey will air April 22.

Robinson said the Lacks family today has a cordial relationship with Johns Hopkins Hospital, which has not financially compensated the family. Although she feels the family should receive something for Henrietta Lacks, she also believes the world got her best part.

When asked about race, Robinson is convinced that race was a factor in the 1951 medical procedure, while Shirley Lacks believes the issue is not about race per se, but rather about a doctor searching for a cancer cure.

The biggest impact of the Henrietta Lacks story, Robinson noted, has to do with medical ethics and humanity. These people (patients) are somebody who matters, she said. You need to treat them like you want to be treated. You need to tell them exactly what youre doing to them. Give them the right to understand.

The March 22 program concluded this years One Book One Campus One Community reading initiative at IUN. Attending were nursing students, including sophomore Amanda Pogue, who focused on ethics in the Skloot book.

Pogue, from Portage, said, Looking back 50 years ago, people are asking, 'How could they ethically do that?' Looking ahead, what will future generations say about what we do?

Link:
Henrietta Lacks' legacy collision of medicine, ethics and race - nwitimes.com

Physicians, healthcare professionals and members of the MLB community will keep a close eye on Red Sox pitcher Andrew Pomeranz's recovery from a potentially career-saving stem cell procedure, according to The Boston Globe.

Here are five things to know:

1. Steve Yoon, MD, of the Los Angeles-based Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic extracted bone marrow from Mr. Pomeranz's hip bone and back and injected it into his flexor tendon.

2. Mr. Pomeranz was motivated to undergo the procedure after fellow pitchers Garrett Richards and Andrew Heaney opted for the treatment instead of undergoing Tommy John Surgery to treat the partial tears in their ulnar collateral ligaments.

3. Lyle Cain, MD, of Birmingham, Ala.-based Andrews Sports Medicine & Orthopedic Center said, "Stem cells are a way to try to deliver the chemicals to cells and the chemical attractive factors to that area to allow the body to heal that tissue. That's what PRP was used for as well. Stem cells have more promise because not only do they have the chemicals that platelet-rich plasma has, but you're also putting some of the healing cells themselves in that area."

4. Pitcher Bartolo Colon was the first baseball player known to receive stem cell treatment when he received injections in his injured rotator cuff and elbow in the Dominican Republic in 2010. The 43-year-old pitcher's career was resurrected following the operation, partially prompting the method's increased popularity.

5. If Mr. Pomeranz has a successful 2017 season, the number of players undergoing stem cell procedures may rise.

More articles on sports medicine:

Nearly-paralyzed ex-NFL player promoting neck injury research 4 takeaways

Does single-sport focus increase athlete injuries? 5 things to know

Knee application segment leads global sports medicine market 8 observations

View post:
The stem cell procedure that may change the sports medicine field in 2017 5 observations - Becker's Orthopedic & Spine

A stem cell-derived heart muscle cell. Proteins that are important for muscle cell contraction are highlighted in red and green, and cell nuclei are blue. Credit: Joseph C. Wu, M.D., Ph.D., Stanford Cardiovascular Institute

Using human heart cells generated from adult stem cells, researchers have developed an index that may be used to determine how toxic a group of cancer drugs, called tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), are to human cells. While 26 TKIs are currently used to treat a variety of cancers, some can severely damage patients hearts, causing problems such as an irregular heartbeat or heart failure.

For the study, reported February 15 in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers used stem cell-derived heart cells from 13 volunteers to develop a cardiac safety index that measures the extent to which TKIs kill or alter the function of heart cells. They found that the TKIs' toxicity score on the index was generally consistent with what is known about each drug's heart-related side effects.

This work follows on the heels of an earlier study from the same research team, published in Nature Medicine, in which they assessed the heart cell toxicity of doxorubicin, a chemotherapy drug that also causes heart-related side effects, including heart failure. In that study, the researchers used stem cell-derived heart cells from women with breast cancer to correctly predict how sensitive each womans heart cells were to doxorubicin.

Such tests could ultimately help the pharmaceutical industry identify drugs that cause heart-related side effects earlier in the drug development process and help the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) during the drug review and approval process, said the study's senior author Joseph C. Wu, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute.

I hope this research will be helpful for individual patients, once we further implement precision medicine approaches, he added.

Ranking Heart Toxicity

To assess the potential risk of heart toxicity for drugs in development, pharmaceutical companies use laboratory tests involving animals (usually rats or mice) or cells from animals or humans that are engineered to artificially express heart-related genes. Drug candidates that appear to have an acceptable balance of benefits and risks typically proceed to testing in human clinical trials.

But there can be biological differences between these existing models and humans, so non-clinical lab tests can have significant limitations, explained Dr. Wu.

Currently, the first time humans are exposed to a new drug is during clinical trials, he said. We think it would be great if you could actually expose patients heart, brain, liver, or kidney cells to a drug in the lab, prior to clinical treatment, allowing researchers to determine whether the drug has any toxic effects.

Dr. Wu, a cardiologist by training, studies toxicities cancer drugs cause in heart cells. Human heart muscle cells (called cardiomyocytes), however, are hard to obtainrequiring risky heart surgery that may be of no direct benefit to the patientand are notoriously difficult to grow in the lab.

As an alternative, researchers have developed a method to produce heart cells from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). hiPSCs are created by genetically engineering normal human skin or blood cells to express four specific genes that induce them to act like stem cells. Chemical treatments can prompt hiPSCs to develop into mature cell types, such as heart muscle cells.

A large body of research has established that human adult stem cell-derived heart cells, which function and grow in cell culture, can be used as an initial model to screen drug compounds for toxic effects on the heart, said Myrtle Davis, Ph.D., chief of the Toxicology and Pharmacology Branch of NCIs Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis, who was not involved in the studies.

For the Science Translational Medicine study, Dr. Wu and his colleagues set out to determine if a panel of human stem cell-derived heart cells could be used to evaluate the heart toxicity of 21 different FDA-approved TKIs.

They generated hiPSC-derived heart endothelial, fibroblast, and muscle cells from 13 volunteers: 11 healthy individuals and 2 people with kidney cancer who were being treated with a TKI. Using drug concentrations equivalent to what patients receive, the investigators next determined how lethal each TKI was to the heart cells.

They found that several TKIs were very lethal to endothelial, fibroblast, and heart muscle cells from all 13 individuals, while others were more benign.

Stem cell-derived heart muscle cells grown in a dish spontaneously contract as a beating heart does, so the researchers also analyzed the effects of TKIs on the cells beat rate, or contractility. They found that several TKIs altered the cells beat rate before they were killed by the drug treatment. If severe enough, an irregular heartbeat (called an arrhythmia), can disrupt normal heart function.

From these lethality and contractility experiments, the team developed a cardiac safety index, a 0-to-1 scale that identifies how toxic a TKI is to heart cells (with 0 being the most toxic). They then used the index to rank the 21 TKIs. The control treatment scored a 1, while a few TKIs that are labeled by the FDA with boxed warnings for severe heart toxicity scored close to 0.

Safety indices like this one can be very useful during drug discovery, said Dr. Davis, and the applicability of the index developed by Dr. Wu and his colleagues will become clear when they evaluate its performance with more compounds.

And for the safety index to be applicable to more patients, the panel of cells used to develop it would need to be gathered from a sufficiently representative population of people reflecting different ages, races/ethnicities, health statuses, and other characteristics, said Lori Minasian, M.D., deputy director of NCIs Division of Cancer Prevention, who was not involved in either study.

For example, the study did not include cells derived from patients with [pre-existing] cardiac disease, said Dr. Davis.

A Personalized Approach

In addition to their potential application during drug development, Dr. Wu believes that stem cell-derived heart cells could potentially be used to predict toxicity risk for individual patients. He and his colleagues explored this possibility in their Nature Medicine study.

Doxorubicin, used on its own or in combination with other drugs, is an effective treatment for breast cancer and several other types of cancer. Like TKIs, however, it is known to cause heart toxicities, such as arrhythmias and heart failure, in a small proportion of patients. But there has been no way to predict which patients will experience these side effects.

The researchers developed stem cell-derived heart cells from eight women with breast cancer who had been treated with doxorubicinhalf of whom experienced cardiotoxicity from the treatment and half who did not.

In several different lab tests, the heart cells from women who had experienced cardiotoxicity were more sensitive to doxorubicin than those from women who had not. More specifically, in heart cells from women who had experienced cardiotoxicity, doxorubicin treatment caused more severe irregularities in cell contractility, and even low concentrations of the drug killed the cells.

An Improved Model

While the stem cell-derived heart cell model may be an improvement over the current [drug testing] system, its not perfect, said Dr. Minasian. For example, the model does not capture contributions of other organs and cells to the toxic effects of a drug, she explained. The drug may be broken down in the liver, for instance, and side products (called metabolites) may also cause toxic effects.

In addition, the lab-grown stem cell-derived version of someones heart cells are not going to be exactly the same as the cells found in that persons heart, Dr. Wu noted. Nevertheless, they reflect the same genetics and they are pretty good at predicting drug response, he said.

Looking forward, Dr. Minasian said, figuring out how to best use this approach is going to take more work, but being able to better predict human response [to cancer drugs] is important.

The research teams next steps include conducting prospective studies to determine whether they can use a patients stem cell-derived heart cells to potentially predict if that person will develop heart toxicity before they actually receive cancer treatment.

This article has been republished frommaterialsprovided byNCI. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

Reference

Sharma, A., Burridge, P. W., McKeithan, W. L., Serrano, R., Shukla, P., Sayed, N., ... & Matsa, E. (2017). High-throughput screening of tyrosine kinase inhibitor cardiotoxicity with human induced pluripotent stem cells. Science translational medicine, 9(377), eaaf2584.

Visit link:
Measuring Heart Toxicity of Cancer Drugs - Technology Networks

March 23, 2017 Two fast-aging mice. The mouse on the left was treated with a FOXO4 peptide, which targets senescent cells and leads to hair regrowth in ten days. The mouse on the right was not treated with the peptide. Credit: Peter L.J. de Keizer

Regular infusions of a peptide that can selectively seek out and destroy broken-down cells that hamper proper tissue renewal, called senescent cells, showed evidence of improving healthspan in naturally-aged mice and mice genetically engineered to rapidly age. The proof-of-concept study, published March 23 in Cell, found that an anti-senescent cell therapy could reverse age-related loss of fur, poor kidney function, and frailty. It is currently being tested whether the approach also extends lifespan, and human safety studies are being planned.

The peptide took over four years of trial and error to develop and builds on nearly a decade of research investigating vulnerabilities in senescent cells as a therapeutic option to combat some aspects of aging (Trends in Molecular Medicine, 10.1016/j.molmed.2016.11.006). It works by blocking the ability of a protein implicated in senescence, FOXO4, to tell another protein, p53, not to cause the cell to self-destruct. By interfering with the FOXO4-p53 crosstalk, the peptide causes senescent cells to go through apoptosis, or cell suicide.

"Only in senescent cells does this peptide cause cell death," says senior author Peter de Keizer, a researcher of aging at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands. "We treated mice for over 10 months, giving them infusions of the peptide three times a week, and we didn't see any obvious side effects. FOXO4 is barely expressed in non-senescent cells, so that makes the peptide interesting as the FOXO4-p53 interaction is especially relevant to senescent cells, but not normal cells."

Results appeared at different times over the course of treatment. Fast-aging mice with patches of missing fur began to recover their coats after 10 days. After about three weeks, fitness benefits began to show, with older mice running double the distance of their counterparts who did not receive the peptide. A month after treatment, aged mice showed an increase in markers indicating healthy kidney function.

Senescent cell therapy is one of several strategies being tested in mice aimed at reversing aging or lengthening healthspan. In 2015, the Valter Longo laboratory at the University of Southern California reported that mice on a calorie-restricted diet that mimics fasting benefited from a longer life, a reduction in inflammatory disease, and improved memory (Cell Metabolism, 10.1016/j.cmet.2015.05.012). And last December, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte at the Salk Institute of Biological Science and colleagues made headlines with their discovery that cellular reprogramming of epigenetic marks could extend lifespan and improve health in fast-aging mice (Cell, 10.1016/j.cell.2016.11.052).

"This wave of research on how we can fight aging is complementary, and not in competition," says de Keizer. "The common thread I see for the future of anti-aging research is that there are three fronts in which we can improve: The prevention of cellular damage and senescence, safe therapeutic removal of senescent cells, to stimulate stem cellsno matter the strategyto improve tissue regeneration once senescence is removed."

de Keizer aims to start a company based on these findings, but in the short term, he and his group want to show that their peptide is non-toxic in humans with no unforeseen side effects. They plan to offer a safety clinical trial in people with Glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive brain tumor, which also shows high levels of the biomarkers needed for this FOXO4 peptide to be effective.

Explore further: Anti-aging therapies targeting senescent cells: Facts and fiction

More information: Cell, Baar et al.: "Targeted Apoptosis of Senescent Cells Restores Tissue Homeostasis in Response to Chemotoxicity and Aging" http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(17)30246-5 DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.02.031

Sebastian Brandhorst et al. A Periodic Diet that Mimics Fasting Promotes Multi-System Regeneration, Enhanced Cognitive Performance, and Healthspan, Cell Metabolism (2015). DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2015.05.012

Alejandro Ocampo et al. In Vivo Amelioration of Age-Associated Hallmarks by Partial Reprogramming, Cell (2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2016.11.052

Journal reference: Cell Cell Metabolism

Provided by: Cell Press

It's an exciting time to be an elderly mouse. Researchers believe that by removing senescent cells (cells with a persistent damage response), which naturally accumulate with age, senior rodents can regrow hair, run faster, ...

Most cells can divide only a limited number of times and eventually undergo permanent cell cycle arrest, a state known as cellular senescence. Cellular senescence is mediated by activation of specific cellular signaling pathways ...

An enzyme that blocks cellular senescence and its mechanisms has been discovered by a research team from Kumamoto University, Japan. They found that a reduction of the enzyme SETD8, which regulates cell proliferation and ...

Mayo Clinic researchers have uncovered three new agents to add to the emerging repertoire of drugs that aim to delay the onset of aging by targeting senescent cells - cells that contribute to frailty and other age-related ...

Researchers at Mayo Clinic have shown that senescent cells - cells that no longer divide and accumulate with age - negatively impact health and shorten lifespan by as much as 35 percent in normal mice. The results, which ...

A Mayo Clinic study has shown evidence linking the biology of aging with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a disease that impairs lung function and causes shortness of breath, fatigue, declining quality of life, and, ultimately, ...

McMaster University researchers have discovered that while survivors of childhood brain tumours have a similar Body Mass Index (BMI) to healthy children with no cancer, they have more fat tissue overall, and especially around ...

Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute scientists and their collaborators at the University of Cambridge have created a new technique that simplifies the production of human brain and muscle cells - allowing millions of functional ...

Regular infusions of a peptide that can selectively seek out and destroy broken-down cells that hamper proper tissue renewal, called senescent cells, showed evidence of improving healthspan in naturally-aged mice and mice ...

Scientists at The Rockefeller University have mapped the three-dimensional structure for one of the more notorious disease-causing molecules in the human body: the protein responsible for the genetic disorder cystic fibrosis. ...

A new study from the University of South Carolina has found a gastrointestinal link that could help explain many of the health issues facing those with Gulf War Illness (GWI) as well as opening new pathways to treatment options ...

People with cystic fibrosis (CF) suffer repeated lung infections because their airway mucus is too thick and sticky to keep bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens from causing chronic infection. How mucus becomes abnormal ...

Adjust slider to filter visible comments by rank

Display comments: newest first

This -- if true -- is one of the most important scientific reports ever!

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

Read more from the original source:
Peptide targeting senescent cells restores stamina, fur, and kidney function in old mice - Medical Xpress

Plasma and stem cells: The future of regenerative medicine

Blood platelet injections and stem cell treatments may sound like the future, but physicians at the Andrews Institute are already practicing these forms of regenerative medicine.

Weight lifting mixed with normal wear and tear left Howie Webber in constant pain.

"I probably felt it about four months ago," said Howie. "I did some stretching, thinking I could make it go away, but it just continued to get worse."

That's when Howie went to the doctor and found out he had two options: surgery or regenerative medicine; he picked the latter.

"I just added up the amount of time I'd be out of work and the cost of surgery, plus the copay and this whole thing just seemed like it would be a little faster and a little easier, and it ended up being just that," said Howie.

Physicians at the Andrew's Institute currently offer two different types of regenerative medicine, platelet rich plasma, or PRP and bone marrow aspirate concentrate, or BMAC.

With PRP, physicians take the patient's blood, separate the platelets and inject those platelets back into the patient at the site of injury. The idea is that platelets carry growth factors and molecules to stimulate the healing process.

BMAC utilizes platelets too, but also the patient's bone marrow harvested from the pelvis.

Both regenerative medicine methods have benefits, perhaps the biggest according to Dr. Brett Kindle, is avoiding invasive surgeries.

"If we need surgery, we need surgery, and that's what it is, but if we can avoid it, that often times is very beneficial from a financial standpoint, missing less work, etc.," said Dr. Kindle. "Also from a quality of life, to be able to get back to doing activities in a more timely manner."

The main difference between the two is price and neither are covered by insurance. BMAC costs upwards of $3,000, while PRP costs anywhere from $600 to $800. Howie opted for PRP.

"It hurt for about three days, then within a week I was pain free," said Howie. "Maybe a little discomfort that you would expect, but it wasn't near as bad as it was before."

Howie's issue was with his hamstrings, but Dr. Kindle said both PRP and BMAC can be used to treat a variety of aches and pains.

"Anything in the limbs," said Dr. Kindle. "Shoulders, elbows, hands, wrists, hips, knees, foot, ankle, all of those areas."

Recovery for both PRP and BMAC procedures is typically one to two weeks. Full effects of the injections don't usually kick in until six to eight weeks later. For more information about regenerative medicine or to schedule a consultation with an Andrews Institute physician, call (850) 916-8700.

Continued here:
Plasma and stem cells: The future of regenerative medicine | WEAR - WEAR

Combining genetic information from a patients tumor cells with three-dimensional cell cultures grown from these tumors and rapidly screening approved drugs can identify the best treatment approaches in patients for whom multiple therapies have failed, according to a new study led by Weill Cornell Medicine investigators.

Published March 22 in Cancer Discovery, the study brings researchers one step closer to fulfilling the promise of precision medicine, which aims to provide targeted, individualized treatment based on each patients genetic profile.

Our goal is to use precision medicine to improve the way clinicians think about cancer therapies as opposed to selecting a therapy that may not be fitted to that patients cancer, said senior author Dr. Mark Rubin, director of the Englander Institute for Precision Medicine and the Homer T. Hirst III Professor of Oncology in Pathology at Weill Cornell Medicine, and director of the joint precision medicine program at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Combining genome sequencing with rapid drug screening enables us to nominate new therapies for patients, which we could not have predicted from the genomics alone.

Cancer genetics research has made great strides in the last 20 years, allowing investigators to now identify mutations in tumor cells that are susceptible to treatment. Still, a significant number of cases remain in which genetic mutations cannot indicate to clinicians exactly what drug will be effective in treating a patients disease, particularly for those with advanced cancers that have failed multiple therapies.

To better treat these patients, Rubin and the research team including co-first authors Dr. Chantal Pauli, a former research fellow in Rubins lab, and Benjamin Hopkins, a postdoctoral associate in co-author Dr. Lewis C. Cantleys lab developed an approach in which tumor cells taken from patients are grown into three-dimensional cell cultures called tumor-derived organoids. The researchers can then test more than 120 U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved cancer drugs against the organoids to determine which drugs show the most promise. After identifying a potential treatment, they transplant the organoid into a mouse to assess how well the tumor responds to the drug. The organoid cell culture system, Rubin said, markedly accelerates the identification of potential therapies compared with current approaches, which depend on growing tumor cells in mice.

With the organoid system, we can obtain answers in one to two months, compared to six months to a year with mice, Rubin said. This is critically important for patients with advanced cancer. We need to strive to identify new and more effective therapies in a timely manner.

Dramatic improvements in the ability to grow tumors as organoids outside the body is bringing precision medicine to the next level of precision, added Cantley, the Meyer Director of the Sandra and Edward Meyer Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medicine. It is now possible to grow a wide variety of tumors outside of the body; this allows the precision medicine team to not only obtain full exome and RNA sequencing data, but also test a panel of approved drugs on the same tumor that is growing in the patient. Importantly, this can occur within a time scale that would allow one to make a clinical decision about the next therapy, should the tumor progress on standard of care.

This approach could revolutionize how cancers are treated in the future, he said, by providing oncologists with detailed information about the genetic aberrations, the gene expression profiles and the response to drugs of the same tumor that is growing in the patient.

For the study, researchers analyzed tumor-derived cells from four patients who came to the Englander Institute for care. Two of the patients had different forms of uterine cancer, while the other two had different forms of colon cancer. The scientists identified effective drugs and drug combinations many of which are medications approved for treating other cancers that they subsequently validated using organoid cultures and organoids transplanted into mice.

Specifically, the researchers discovered that the combination of two breast cancer drugs could treat one of the uterine cancer cases. For the other, one of the top treatments was a combination of a breast cancer drug and a lymphoma drug.

The investigators found that a colon cancer drug combined with one approved for metastatic melanoma could treat one of the colon cancer cases; they believe their results could establish a basis for a clinical trial. For the other colon cancer case, the scientists identified a therapy that combines a lung cancer drug with one approved for treating blood cancers such as lymphoma and multiple myeloma.

At the moment, there is no standard to guide a clinicians decision of when to give a patient a drug thats not recommended by the FDA, Rubin said. With this study, were trying to establish a standard that uses a patients cells to answer that question.

This study was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health, the Starr Cancer Consortium and the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

Joseph Bonner is a freelance writer for Weill Cornell Medicine.

Excerpt from:
Three-pronged approach is key to precision medicine - Cornell Chronicle

US Stem Cell Inc (OTCMKTS: USRM) has enjoyed a prosperous 2017 as a whole so far, when you back up and look at the whole picture. This, a stock that was trading as low as .0019/share starting out in January, went on to fall just a hair shy of the six cent mark, at .0599. That was a run of more than 3,000% and it happened in two main thrusts within the first two months of the calendar year.

Each of those intense surges was followed by a period of sideways and consolidative trading, but each time, they have given way to further moves to the upside. Most recently, the stock came down to below the two-cent area, and has since run back over a nickel on the strength of some encouraging financials, including the first time in the companys history that it recorded a positive cash flow.

But is a solid financial filing worthy of the monumental increases that shares of US Stem Cell Inc (OTCMKTS: USRM) have seen in 2017? The company certainly didnt post 3,000% increases in any statistical category, so what gives? Why has the market dictated USRM surge so high in price this year?

The answer could lie in the extreme high potential of the market space in which the company operates. According to the world-renowned Mayo Clinic, regenerative medicine is a game-changing area of medicine with the potential to fully heal damaged tissues and organs, offering solutions and hope for people who have conditions that today are beyond repair. Regenerative medicine itself isnt new, but advances in developmental and cell biology, immunology, and other fields have unlocked new opportunities. According to some estimates, the global market valuation of the regenerative medicine/cell therapy industry could exceed $100B annually within the next five years.

USRM is working hard to make its mark on the regenerative medicine / cellular therapy industry by marketing cell based therapeutics that prevent, treat, or cure disease by repairing and replacing damaged or aged tissue, cells, and organs and restoring their normal function. The company holds the believe that regenerative medicine / cellular therapeutics will play a large role in positively changing the natural history of diseases, and ultimately lessen patient burdens and reducing the economic impact disease imposes upon society.

Its business includes three divisions (US Stem Cell Training, Vetbiologics, and US Stem Cell Clinic), the development of proprietary cell therapy products, as well as revenue generating physician and patient based regenerative medicine / cell therapy training services, cell collection and cell storage services, the sale of cell collection and treatment kits for humans and animals, and the operation of a cell therapy clinic.

It is perhaps the extreme high potential of a USRM, and its operating space that leads many investors to see the hidden value in this company. The regenerative medicine business has some enormous players that already have a hold over the traditional medicine markets. That paints a target on smaller companies that are working diligently to develop viable regenerative treatments for a wide array of degenerative diseases. It would only take one key breakthrough to make USRM the subject of a buyout.

Perhaps the investment community senses this, and that may explain, at least partially, the meteoric rise of US Stem Cell Inc (OTCMKTS: USRM) in 2017. Were definitely going to want to keep a very close eye on any and all developments coming out of the USRM camp. Well be certain to relay any significant changes along to our readers. Stay up to date on USRM by signing up for our 100% free penny stock newsletter. It takes just a second to submit your email into the box below, so subscribe now!

Go here to see the original:
Do Investors See Hidden Value in US Stem Cell Inc (OTCMKTS: USRM) - Street Register

Sonny Lacks is known for his smile. Wide and welcoming, it's a feature that others tell him he shares with his mother.

He wishes he knew that for himself, but he was only 4 when she died.

On a recent Monday afternoon, Sonny and his older brother, Lawrence, sat at a dining room table in Baltimore and examined sketches of what will be their mother's tombstone. They've never had enough money for one. Finally, after all these years, a gift will allow their mother to be remembered as they want her to be.

Lawrence looked at the images but said little. He doesn't like talking about the mother he lost when he was 16.

"Don't know why; I never could," he said, taking off his glasses and rubbing his moist eyes. "I just can't."

The course of their lives changed in 1951 when their mother visited what was then Johns Hopkins Hospital, just 20 minutes down the road from where her boys now live. It was there that doctors discovered her strange illness and removed mysterious cells from her body.

The sons are one legacy of Henrietta Lacks a poor woman from the tobacco fields of south-central Virginia. The other is this: Her cells are still multiplying ferociously nearly six decades after her death. They have led to medical miracles such as the vaccine for polio and have produced millions of dollars in revenue for others.

The family's great loss has become the world's great gain.

___

Henrietta Lacks, died in 1951 at 31, but millions have been helped by study of the cells that killed her.

Henrietta Lacks was born Loretta Pleasant on Aug. 1, 1920, in Roanoke. The boys aren't sure how she became Henrietta, which was shortened to Hennie after her mother's death when the girl was 4.

Hennie and her nine siblings were sent to live with aunts, uncles and cousins in the tiny farming town of Clover, about four hours west of Norfolk.

Hennie landed with her grandfather, who also was raising one of her first cousins, David. They lived in what was called the "home-house," a two-story cabin built of hand-hewn logs and pegs that once was the slave quarters of their ancestors.

It looks toward the family cemetery, where the white relatives Hennie's great-grandfather and great-uncles were plantation owners are buried behind a row of boxwoods. The bushes separate their resting places from those of the family's black members, many of whom are in unmarked graves in a meadow.

The hundreds of acres surrounding the home-house were, and still are, known as Lacks Town. Those living in nearly every dwelling dotting the tobacco fields were, and still are, kin.

Growing up, the cousins scared each other with tales about the cemetery and phantom dogs and pigs that roamed Lacks Town Road, which runs alongside the house and up a half-mile to where cousin Sadie Grinnan was born in 1928.

Sadie remembers Hennie as the most beautiful thing, with honey-colored skin, a round face and a smile that made boys act like fools.

Sadie said she was surprised when Hennie and David, who went by "Day," started acting like a couple; they'd been raised like brother and sister.

But Lawrence was born to them in 1935 and Elsie four years later. Elsie was as striking as her mother but was born different, what some called "deaf and dumb."

Hennie and Day married in 1941, and the family left their life of farming tobacco to join the flood of blacks making their way to Baltimore and Washington, D.C., where wartime prosperity awaited in the shipyards and steel mills.

They were headed, they thought, to an easier life.

Sadie moved to Baltimore in the mid-1940s and often caught the No. 26 trolley to Turner Station, where Hennie had settled in as a housewife in the brick apartments built for the workers swelling the waterfront.

But Hennie missed the country and often piled the kids onto a bus for trips back to Clover.

Whether in Virginia or Maryland, she loved being a mom. Sadie watched her braid Elsie's long, brown hair and fret about the way the girl ran wild and darted off if they weren't looking.

Hennie could be as strict as she was sweet. After Sonny came along in 1947 and Deborah two years later, Lawrence was in charge of hand-washing the babies' diapers. If they weren't clean enough, Mama made him do it again.

About the time their fifth child, Joe, was born in 1950, Hennie and Day decided it was best to put Elsie in Crownsville State Hospital, once known as The Hospital for the Negro Insane of Maryland.

It broke Hennie's heart, "but she would visit her all the time," Sadie said.

___

A statue of Jesus dominates the original entrance to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. The tradition is for those passing to rub the foot or touch the robe. Members of the Lacks family say they remember rubbing the toe when they arrived with Henrietta Lacks for cervical cancer treatment in the early 1950s.

A few months later, Hennie shared a secret. She'd started bleeding even though it wasn't her time of the month. And one morning she took a bath and discovered something. She told Sadie: "I feel a lump."

Dr. Howard Jones was the gynecologist on duty Feb. 1, 1951, in the outpatient center at Johns Hopkins when Henrietta Lacks came in.

Jones, who with his wife would later found the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine in Norfolk, examined her and saw something so peculiar it would stay with him for decades: A glistening, smooth growth that resembled purple Jell-O.

It was about the size of a quarter at the lower right of her cervix, and it bled easily when touched.

Jones thought it might be an infection and tested Lacks for syphilis, but the results came back negative. He ordered a biopsy cutting away a small portion of the tissue and within 48 hours had the diagnosis: cancer.

When Lacks returned for treatment eight days later, a second doctor sliced off another sliver of her tumor. Following the practice of the day, Lacks was not told.

Radium capsules were packed around her cervix to kill the cancer cells, and she later was released from the hospital.

At home, Lacks didn't tell anyone about her illness.

She continued to take care of her babies, two still in diapers; visit Elsie when someone would drive her to Crownsville; and cook her husband his favorite foods, such as white pinto beans.

She regularly returned to Johns Hopkins for treatment, but the cancer cells were swarming faster than the radium could kill them. It was becoming difficult for her to hide the pain. Cousins would enter the house and hear her upstairs, wailing, "Oh, Lord, oh, Lord, I can't get no ease! Jesus, help me, Jesus!"

On Aug. 8, shortly after her 31st birthday, she was readmitted to Johns Hopkins for what would be the last time.

Just after midnight on Oct. 4, 1951, Henrietta Lacks died. Doctors performed an autopsy that revealed firm white lumps studding her body, her chest cavity, lungs, liver and kidney. Her bladder appeared to be one solid tumor.

The cells seemed uncontrollable.

Sonny's only memory of his mother is from her funeral in Clover.

She was buried in an unmarked grave near the home-house, and he remembers how rain poured from the sky, as though heaven were weeping for Hennie.

___

Lawrence Lacks, 75, the oldest son of Henrietta Lacks lives in Baltimore, where most of the Lacks family still lives. Lacks was a teenager when his mother died in 1951 of cervical cancer.

Back in Baltimore, cousins came to help the widowed Day, who was trying to pull shifts at the shipyard and manage his three youngest children. Visits to Elsie became rarer.

Lawrence helped out, but he soon left to join the Army. Two relatives, one the family would later describe as evil, moved in to care for his brothers and sister.

Sonny recalls being beaten for no reason and having little food, maybe a biscuit, each day. The cabinets were locked so the kids wouldn't try to get more.

As they grew older, the children spent summers in Clover, plucking and stringing tobacco as their mom had done. They kept the abuse to themselves. Stoic, like their mom.

After his Army stint, Lawrence returned to Baltimore, married and took in his brothers and sister when their dad became ill. Elsie died at Crownsville in 1955; the family learned years later that she had been abused and may have had holes drilled in her head during experiments.

No one in the family talked about Hennie. Lawrence and his father didn't want to, and the younger kids didn't ask. Part of the Clover upbringing was that children didn't bother grown-ups with a lot of questions.

Henrietta's children had children of their own, and they, too, didn't ask about Grandma. It was as though she hadn't existed.

Then, in the early 1970s, the family got a call.

Researchers wanted Sonny and other family members to give blood samples so more could be learned about their mother's genetic makeup. The family wanted to know why.

Part of their mother, they were told, was alive and growing more than 20 years after her death.

Tissue from their mother's second biopsy in 1951 had been given to Johns Hopkins researcher Dr. George Gey, who for years had been trying unsuccessfully to grow human cells outside the body in his search for a cancer cure.

Technicians expected Lacks' cells to do what previous samples had done: nothing, or perhaps live a few days then die. Instead, the cells multiplied in petri dishes, spreading and piling atop one another. Uncontrollable.

On the day Lacks died, Gey appeared on a television program called "Cancer Can Be Conquered." He held Lacks' cells in a bottle close to the camera and discussed his scientific breakthrough: the first human cell line ever grown.

Gey called the cells "HeLa" the first two letters of Henrietta Lacks' first and last names and gave samples to other researchers around the country. Cancer cells work enough like normal cells that doctors could test and probe them and unlock their secrets.

Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh Medical School infected HeLa cells with the polio virus and studied the reaction. By 1955, he had created a vaccine that helped nearly eradicate the crippling disease.

Companies used HeLa to test cosmetics. Researchers put flasks of HeLa near atomic test sites to measure the effects of radiation on human cells. Scientists sent HeLa into space with white mice to determine what happened to human flesh at zero gravity. HeLa helped scientists discover genetic mapping.

The cells multiplied so rapidly that they often contaminated other laboratory samples. In the 1970s, Soviet researchers thought they had discovered a virus that caused cancer, but it turned out HeLa cells had permeated the Iron Curtain.

The revelation led to improvements in the way labs handle cells and cultures.

Other cell lines were being born, but HeLa cells had become the gold standard. They shipped and stored well, and were incredibly robust. Jones said most cells can duplicate themselves in a culture in 36 hours; HeLa doubles in 24. The chromosomes in most cells shorten with each duplication until the cells can't divide anymore. Not HeLa.

Doctors still aren't sure why. Jones, 99, said recently: "They are still that unique."

___

David Sonny Lacks, 62, right, and Lawrence Lacks, 75, both of Baltimore, talk about their mother, Henrietta Lacks, who died in 1951. Sonny doesnt remember his mother but is told he has her smile. Lawrence doesnt like to talk about her; she died when he was 16.

Over the years, the Lacks family became used to the occasional phone calls from reporters and researchers.

They told what little they knew to Rolling Stone and Jet magazines and to the BBC.

What family members couldn't get used to was what had happened to Hennie.

They were angry at Johns Hopkins because they felt the hospital removed her cells without her permission.

They were bewildered by all the scientific jargon and how researchers took their blood but did not follow up or explain the results, they said. None of the children have developed their mother's aggressive cancer.

They were enraged by biomedical companies that produced the cells like they were printing money and sold them for millions, while many in the family couldn't afford health insurance.

Cousin Sadie Grinnan, now Sadie Sturdivant, 81, lives in Nathalie, near Clover, and is bothered by it, too.

"These other people," she said, "are making billions and billions."

What was hardest for Hennie's children to deal with was that so many people knew so much about their mother, while they knew so little.

"That's what hurts," Sonny said.

Now, he's looking for closure. It began in earnest with the release earlier this year of Rebecca Skloot's book, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks."

The book recounts the family's struggle, the science and the ethical implications surrounding the use of the cells.

Sonny's sister Deborah had worked closely with the author but died last May from heart disease. Deborah, who was 59, went to her grave wanting to honor her mother.

Sonny now is determined to fulfill her wish.

___

Henrietta Lacks great-granddaughter Aiyana Rogers, 11, looks at a family photo and a book about Lacks at her grandmother's home in Baltimore on April 12, 2010. Aiyana says shes proud of her great-grandmother. I just like that the world knows her now, she says. And that she is the most important woman in the world.

The family is working with an attorney to get a handle on all things Henrietta. For example, Sonny recently heard that a group in New York is holding a Henrietta Lacks race, and he wondered how people could do that without the family's permission. He and his brothers don't have the time or know-how to answer those kinds of questions.

Lawrence, now 75, rehabilitates houses for a living. Sonny, 62, is a truck driver who often picks up his grandkids in the afternoons. He helps out his younger brother, Joe, who changed his name to Zakariyya Abdul Rahman and goes by Abdul. At 59, Abdul has problems with his legs and can't get around easily.

The family has pooled its money to buy headstones for their father, who died in 2002 and is buried in Baltimore, and for Elsie, whose body was relocated to a grave near her mother's in Clover.

The Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta has volunteered to pay for Hennie's tombstone, and Skloot will buy one for Deborah, who was buried in Baltimore. The author also has established a scholarship fund for the family.

In a ceremony in October, Johns Hopkins will honor the contributions of Henrietta Lacks and others who have participated in scientific research.

Administrators say they think the medical center's role in Lacks' story often has been misrepresented. Dr. Daniel Ford, director of the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research at Johns Hopkins, said the hospital's critics are applying modern rules to a different era.

Patient consent, now a medical standard, wasn't even considered in 1951. Ford noted that Lacks' tissue was given away by researcher Gey and that the hospital never patented HeLa cells or sold them commercially.

"Gey's whole goal was to find a human cell line that would reproduce," Ford said. "It would be a platform, a model that scientists could learn human cell function from."

Gey had no idea what would happen.

Over the years, HeLa cells have multiplied to the point that they could weigh more than 20 tons, or 400 times Lacks' adult body weight. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, there are close to 11,000 patents involving HeLa. The cells are so prevalent that they can be ordered by the vial on the Internet.

The family tries to concentrate on all the good that's come from them. On Memorial Day weekend in Lacks Town, they will install their mother's headstone, made of granite with a rose-colored tint that hints of flowers sweet, like Hennie, and growing, like her cells.

Her grandchildren came up with the words that will be carved into the stone:

"In loving memory of a phenomenal woman, wife and mother who touched the lives of many. Here lies Henrietta Lacks (HeLa). Her immortal cells will continue to help mankind forever."

Aiyana Rogers, one of Sonny's granddaughters, flopped down at the dining table in Baltimore where the Lacks brothers talked about the memorial. She brought out a family portrait and Skloot's book, which she has started to read.

Aiyana's intrigued by the science and by the cures, but mostly she's just proud of her great-grandmother.

"I just like that the world knows her now," the 11-year-old said, with a wide, welcoming smile. "And that she is the most important woman in the world."

Go here to read the rest:
Cancer killed Henrietta Lacks then made her immortal - Virginian-Pilot

NewsMar 19, 2017 | Original Story from the National Phenotypic Screening Centre

Research teams based the Universities of Dundee and Edinburgh are looking to partner with the pharmaceutical industry to better understand the biological processes that could allow the development of new drugs to support tissue regeneration or repair. The National Phenotypic Screening Centre (NPSC) at the University of Dundee and the Medical Research Council (MRC) Centre for Regenerative Medicine (CRM) at the University of Edinburgh have signed a memorandum of understanding that commits them to work more closely together as they strive to translate novel biological discoveries into new stem cell therapies. Regenerative medicine therapies to treat a range of debilitating diseases (including blindness, liver disease, Parkinsons disease, arthritis and many others) are actively being developed around the world. Many of them are and are based on one of two approaches: implantation of stem-cell-derived cells or the use of drugs to selectively activate and mobilize the bodys own stem cells in order to replace damaged or diseased tissues. Understanding the stem cells in tissues and their supporting environment (the stem cell niche) is critical to both approaches. The UK Regenerative Medicine Platform funded Engineering and exploiting the stem cell niche Hub, led by the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine (CRM) at the University of Edinburgh, is dedicated to further understanding of the biology of stem cell niches and to exploit this knowledge therapeutically to improve organ regeneration through endogenous repair and cell transplantation. Finding new drugs which can activate endogenous regenerative pathways requires the development of cell-based assays that are able to reproduce thecomplexbehaviour (the phenotype) of the cells and tissues in patients. The National Phenotypic Screening Centre (NPSC) specialises in developing such complex assays so they can be systematically screened using large libraries of drug-like molecules to uncover agents that can alter cell and tissue behaviour. Close collaboration between thetwocentres, which together represent government investment amounting to around 35M, will allow novel biological discoveries from CRM to benefit from the expertise and industrial drug screening infrastructure provided by the NPSC, leading to the start-points for new therapies. An in-depth understanding of cell and tissue function will facilitate the search to find molecules that improve key tissue regeneration processes that could eventually be used as drugs for regenerative repair. Professor Stuart Forbes, Director of the Centre for Regenerative Medicine and co-director of the Niche Hub, said, Stem cell medicine is coming of age, this is a great opportunity for Scottish Universities to partner with industry to ensure we can translate excellent science to new therapies that can help patients with chronic disease. Dr Paul Andrews, Director of Operations at the NPSC, said, We are very excited to be able to sign this agreement which will help cement our growing relationship with the excellent scientists that are within the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine and the wider UK Regenerative Medicine Hub network. UKRMP DirectorDr Rob Buckle said, This MOU between the Niche Hub and NPSC extends the growth of the UKRMP by encouraging further interactions with the wider UK research community which will help to open up new opportunities and approaches to help deliver the great promise of regenerative medicine. This article has been republished from materials provided by the National Phenotypic Screening Centre. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

Like what you just read? You can find similar content on the communities below.

To personalize the content you see on Technology Networks homepage, Log In or Subscribe for Free

Go here to read the rest:
Scottish Universities Collaborate to Develop New Drugs for Tissue ... - Technology Networks