Category Archives: Hawaii Stem Cells

The Hawaii Stem Cell Treatment Center is not offering stem cell therapy as a cure for any condition, disease or injury. No statements or treatments on this website have been evaluated or approved by the FDA. This website contains no medical advice. All statements and opinions provided by this website are provided for educational and informational purposes only and we do not diagnose or treat via this website or via telephone. The Hawaii Stem Cell Treatment Center is offering patient funded research to treat individual patients with their own autologous stem cells and is not involved in the use or manufacture of any investigational drugs.

The Hawaii Stem Cell Treatment Center does not claim that any applications or potential applications using these autologous stem cell treatments are approved by the FDA or are even effective. We do not claim that these treatments work for any listed nor unlisted condition, intended or implied. It is important for potential patients to do their own research based on the options that we present so that one can make an informed decision. Ay decision to participate in our patient funded experimental protocols is completely voluntary.

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Stem Cell Treatment Center Hawaii - Help - Stem Cell ...

The Hawaii Stem Cell Treatment Center is not offering stem cell therapy as a cure for any condition, disease or injury. No statements or treatments on this website have been evaluated or approved by the FDA. This website contains no medical advice. All statements and opinions provided by this website are provided for educational and informational purposes only and we do not diagnose or treat via this website or via telephone. The Hawaii Stem Cell Treatment Center is offering patient funded research to treat individual patients with their own autologous stem cells and is not involved in the use or manufacture of any investigational drugs.

The Hawaii Stem Cell Treatment Center does not claim that any applications or potential applications using these autologous stem cell treatments are approved by the FDA or are even effective. We do not claim that these treatments work for any listed nor unlisted condition, intended or implied. It is important for potential patients to do their own research based on the options that we present so that one can make an informed decision. Ay decision to participate in our patient funded experimental protocols is completely voluntary.

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Stem Cell Treatment Center Hawaii - Rules - Stem Cell ...

The Potential and Controversy of Human Cloning and Use of Stem Cells

Panel: Cloning Humans is Unsafe by LAURA MECKLER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Cloning human beings for the purpose of reproduction is medically unsafe and should be banned but cloning for disease research should be allowed, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences (news - web sites) concluded Friday.

The scientific report comes even as White House bioethics advisers are weighing the benefits of medical advances against the moral hazards of human cloning. On Thursday President Bush (news - web sites) challenged the ethics group to be the ``conscience of the country.''

The academy's report said: ``Human reproductive cloning should not now be practiced. It is dangerous and likely to fail.''

Animal cloning has shown that ``only a small percentage of attempts are successful; that many of the clones die during gestation, even in late stages; that newborn clones are often abnormal; and that the procedures may carry serious risks for the mother,'' said the panel on the scientific and medical aspects of human cloning.

However, the panel of scientists added that the ban should not extend to cloning of embryos in order to extract stem cells that have the potential to treat life-threatening diseases. That practice is sometimes called therapeutic cloning to differentiate it from reproductive cloning.

The science panel urged that the safety of reproductive cloning be re-evaluated every five years but that the procedure be banned during that time.

``The panel believes that no responsible scientists or physicians are likely to undertake to clone a human,'' the report said. ``Nevertheless, no voluntary system that is established to restrict reproductive cloning is likely to be completely effective.''

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Human Cloning and Stem Cells - University of Hawaii

Question: Why all the excitement about stem cells?

Stem cell research is the topic of some very intense debate in the US and around the world. Before forming an opinion on the bioethics of different forms of stem cell research, it's important to understand the potential benefits to using stem cells for biomedical research.

Answer:

A stem cell line, once established from a cell in the body, is essentially immortal, meaning the cell line can be sub-cultured indefinitely, frozen for storage and shared with other researchers. Stem cells are pluripotent when harvested and can be studied to help us to understand how they transform into specialized cells that differentiate our various organs.

Many serious medical conditions, such as cancer and birth defects, arise from problems that occur during cell differentiation. Once those processes are understood, scientists may use genetic engineering methods to engineer stem cell lines for treatment of diseases, (therapeutic cloning), and possibly even for the generation of organs for transplantation (also known as regenerative medicine).

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Stem Cell Research - Stem Cells and Medicine ...

Hawaii has a growing biomedicine industry that is important to the states economy and to researchers performing fundamental research on stem cells. Progress is possible through appropriate legislation and public funding. As no federal legislation in the United States regulates stem cell research (except by an executive order to not allow federal funding to be used for embryonic stem cell research except on human embryonic stem cell lines created before August 9, 2001), each state is responsible for determining policy and funding for stem cell research. In 2007 Hawaii approved H.B. No. 364 to establish stem cell research policy and form an institute for regenerative medicine at the University of Hawaii.

The institute is assigned the goals of supporting stem cell and related research, translating innovation into clinical therapies through development and clinical trials, and establishing appropriate regulation and oversight. The state will benefit monetarily from royalties, patents, and licensing fees from the institutes discoveries and innovations. Funding provided to the institute is not to be used for human reproductive cloning.

The bill permits derivation of human embryonic stem cells and somatic cell nuclear transfer, as well as research on human embryonic stem and germ cells and human adult stem cells. This research requires institutional board review to consider ethical and medical implications. Excess embryos from in vitro fertilization may be donated by the parents with informed consent and the understanding that their confidentiality is to be maintained. The bill bans the sale of embryonic or fetal tissue directly, though handling fees are permissible.

To support stem cell and other biomedical research, the state offers high technology investment tax credits; other funding must be applied for through various sources such as the National Institutes of Health and private grant and foundation money, though there is extensive competition.

The Kakaako Biomedical Park in Honolulu is home to the University of Hawaiis John A. Burns School of Medicine, including an academic building and a research building. The complex is located near Waterfront Park and has views of Waikiki and Diamond Head. The park is meant to attract biotech companies for economic growth by increasing jobs and expanding the tax base. One such company located at Kakaako is Tissue Genesis, Inc. The company was established in 2001 to research bioengineering to create vascular and musculoskel-etal tissue and cell therapies for regenerative medicine with the hope of using a patients own cells.

The John A. Burns School of Medicine was founded in 1965. The schools mission is to train biomedical and allied health professionals in addition to physicians. Among the 14 departments are the departments of biochemistry, physiology and reproductive biology, and cell and molecular biology. The school also has centers on aging and clinical research and an Institute for Biogenesis Research.

Research at the University of Hawaii relating to stem cells includes work by the cell and molecular biology department (offering undergraduate and graduate courses and a broad range of research opportunities in cell differentiation in early development, DNA structure of germ cells and somatic cells, germ cells, and cloning).

Research at the Cardiovascular Research Center is being done to identify genetic mutations in mice leading to abnormal skin cell (keratinocyte) stem cell differentiation, genetic links to cardiovascular disease, and a study to determine the relationship between white blood cells and the replenishing of brain neural stem sells. Research by the Institute for Biogenesis Research includes studies on assisted fertilization and cloning, cell aging, and rejuvenescence.

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Hawaii (Stem Cell) - what-when-how

Adult stem cells are undifferentiated cells, found throughout the body after development, that multiply by cell division to replenish dying cells and regenerate damaged tissues. Also known as somatic stem cells (from Greek , meaning of the body), they can be found in juvenile as well as adult animals and human bodies.

Scientific interest in adult stem cells is centered on their ability to divide or self-renew indefinitely, and generate all the cell types of the organ from which they originate, potentially regenerating the entire organ from a few cells. Unlike embryonic stem cells, the use of human adult stem cells in research and therapy is not considered to be controversial, as they are derived from adult tissue samples rather than human 5 day old embryos generated by IVF (in vitro fertility) clinics designated for scientific research. They have mainly been studied in humans and model organisms such as mice and rats.

A stem cell possesses two properties:

To ensure the safety of others, stem cells undergo two types of cell division (see Stem cell division and differentiation diagram). Symmetric division gives us a rise to two identical daughter cells, both endowed with stem cell properties, whereas asymmetric such division produces only one of those stem cells and a progenitor cell with limited self-renewal potential. Progenitors can go through several rounds of cell division before finally differentiating into a mature cell. It is believed that the molecular distinction between symmetric and asymmetric divisions lies in differential segregation of cell membrane proteins (such as receptors) between the daughter cells.

Adult stem cells express transporters of the ATP-binding cassette family that actively pump a diversity of organic molecules out of the cell.[2] Many pharmaceuticals are exported by these transporters conferring multidrug resistance onto the cell. This complicates the design of drugs, for instance neural stem cell targeted therapies for the treatment of clinical depression.

Adult stem cell research has been focused on uncovering the general molecular mechanisms that control their self-renewal and differentiation.

Discoveries in recent years have suggested that adult stem cells might have the ability to differentiate into cell types from different germ layers. For instance, neural stem cells from the brain, which are derived from ectoderm, can differentiate into ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm.[5] Stem cells from the bone marrow, which is derived from mesoderm, can differentiate into liver, lung, GI tract and skin, which are derived from endoderm and mesoderm.[6] This phenomenon is referred to as stem cell transdifferentiation or plasticity. It can be induced by modifying the growth medium when stem cells are cultured in vitro or transplanting them to an organ of the body different from the one they were originally isolated from. There is yet no consensus among biologists on the prevalence and physiological and therapeutic relevance of stem cell plasticity. More recent findings suggest that pluripotent stem cells may reside in blood and adult tissues in a dormant state.[7] These cells are referred to as "Blastomere Like Stem Cells" (Am Surg. 2007 Nov;73:1106-10) and "very small embryonic like" - "VSEL" stem cells, and display pluripotency in vitro.[7] As BLSC's and VSEL cells are present in virtually all adult tissues, including lung, brain, kidneys, muscles, and pancreas[8] Co-purification of BLSC's and VSEL cells with other populations of adult stem cells may explain the apparent pluripotency of adult stem cell populations. However, recent studies have shown that both human and murine VSEL cells lack stem cell characteristics and are not pluripotent.[9][10][11][12]

Hematopoietic stem cells are found in the bone marrow and give rise to all the blood cell types.

Mammary stem cells provide the source of cells for growth of the mammary gland during puberty and gestation and play an important role in carcinogenesis of the breast.[13] Mammary stem cells have been isolated from human and mouse tissue as well as from cell lines derived from the mammary gland. Single such cells can give rise to both the luminal and myoepithelial cell types of the gland, and have been shown to have the ability to regenerate the entire organ in mice.[13]

Intestinal stem cells divide continuously throughout life and use a complex genetic program to produce the cells lining the surface of the small and large intestines.[14] Intestinal stem cells reside near the base of the stem cell niche, called the crypts of Lieberkuhn. Intestinal stem cells are probably the source of most cancers of the small intestine and colon.[15]

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Adult stem cell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Embryonic stem cells are thought by most scientists and researchers to hold potential cures for spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, hundreds of rare immune system and genetic disorders and much more.

Scientists see almost infinite value in the use of embryonic stem cell research to understand human development and the growth and treatment of dieases.

Actual cures are many years away, though, since research has not progressed to the point where even one cure has yet been generated by embryonic stem cell research.

Over 100 million Americans suffer from diseases that eventually may be treated more effectively or even cured with embryonic stem cell therapy. Some researchers regard this as the greatest potential for the alleviation of human suffering since the advent of antibiotics.

Many pro-lifers believe that the proper moral and religious course of action is to save existing life through embryonic stem cell therapy.

Cons

Some staunch pro-lifers and most pro-life organizations regard the destruction of the blastocyst, which is a laboratory-fertilized human egg, to be the murder of human life. They believe that life begins at conception, and that destruction of this pre-born life is morally unacceptable.

They believe that it is immoral to destroy a few-days-old human embryo, even to save or reduce suffering in existing human life.

Many also believe that insufficient attention been given to explore the potential of adult stem cells, which have already been used to successfully cure many diseases. They also argue that too little attention has been paid to the potential of umbilical cord blood for stem cell research. They also point out that no cures have yet been produced by embryonic stem cell therapy.

At every step of the embryonic stem cell therapy process, decisions are made by scientists, researchers, medical professionals and women who donate eggs...decisions that are fraught with serious ethical and moral implications. Those against embryonic stem cell research argue that funding should be used to greatly expand adult stem research, to circumvent the many moral issues involving the use of human embryos.

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Pros & Cons of Embryonic Stem Cell Research - US Liberal ...

Stem Cell Therapy Hawaii Worldstemcells.com is one of the leading stem cell therapy and treatment providers for residents of Hawaii and across the nation. Our cutting edge technology and compassionate staff truly set us apart from the competition. We are a US based company that understands your needs and concerns when looking for a stem cell treatment center. Our treatment center is located in Cancun, Mexico.

Getting Started With Your Stem Cell Therapy and Treatments Here at World Stem Cells LLC we try to make the process of receiving stem cell transplants as easy as possible. We will help you figure out what your needs are and help you reach your goals as fast as possible. Follow the steps below on what to do.

Option 1 1.) Go to any page on our website and fill out the contact form. 2.) Fill in the required information and select the condition you would like to treat with stem cell therapy. 3.) Be sure to include any special information in the comments section. 4.) Click the submit button and we will contact you in a timely manner. 5.) Thats it, youre done!!!

REQUEST INFORMATION NOW!

Option 2

Call 800-234-1693 and speak with a representative regarding your stem cell therapy needs and requirements.

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Stem Cell Therapy Hawaii | Stem Cell Treatments

In recent years, Kumba, a 13-year-old rottweiler mix, and beloved pet, had been living a life in pain. "Kumba had a lot of problems with his back legs; both his hips and his knees were affected by really severe arthritis and he was having a hard time getting up and down and his quality of life was really being affected," said Dr. Cristina Miliaresis, who is a veterinarian at Surf Paws Veterinary Hospital in Hawaii Kai. Reports show it's a painful problem affecting up to 40 percent of the 164 million cats and dogs in the United States. "When we heard about the therapy, it was an option for us and for Kumba to live a better quality of life," said Kumbas owner Rumi Hospedar. In June, veterinarians took fat tissue from Kumba's shoulder, separated the stem cells, then injected it back into his ailing joints. In the past, veterinarians had to send tissue to the mainland, but a company called MediVet provided the equipment to do it all in clinic. "He came back today so we could check up on him and see how he's doing," said Dr. Miliaresis. She said most of their pet patients are more than 10 years and no longer candidates for orthopedic procedures. So for the family, they couldn't be happier knowing Kumba has another chance at being the kind of dog, they know, he wants to be. "Kumbas doing much better he's spends a lot more time moving around. He's much more active and my biggest vision of Kumba is him galloping around like a horse because when he's happy he's galloping around the back yard with almost like a smile on his face," said Hospedar.

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Stem cell treatment gives Honolulu dog better life | More ...