Category Archives: Stem Cell Research

docent/ShutterstockWhether or not theres a scientific benefit to being baldwell let the follically challenged among us be the judge of thatscientists continue to search for a balding cure. According to UCLA researchers, that isnt completely out of the question. A team, led by Heather Christofk, PhD, and William Lowry, PhD, found a new way to activate the stem cells in the hair follicle to make hair grow. Their findings, published in the journal Nature Cell Biology, may lead to new drugs to promote hair growth or work as a cure for baldness or alopecia (hair loss linked to factors like hormonal imbalance, stress, aging or chemotherapy).

Working at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA, the researchers discovered that the metabolism of the stem cells embedded in hair follicles is different from the metabolism of other cells of the skin. When they altered that metabolic pathway in mice, they discovered they could either stop hair growth, or make hair grow rapidly. They did this by first blocking, then increasing, the production of a metabolitelactategenetically.

Before this, no one knew that increasing or decreasing the lactate would have an effect on hair follicle stem cells, says Dr. Lowry, a professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology, as reported on ScienceDaily. Once we saw how altering lactate production in the mice influenced hair growth, it led us to look for potential drugs that could be applied to the skin and have the same effect.

Two drugs in particularknown by the generic designations of RCGD423 and UK5099influenced hair follicle stem cells in distinct ways to promote lactate production. The use of both drugs to promote hair growth are covered by provisional patent applications. However, they are experimental drugs and have been used in preclinical tests only. They wont be ready for prime time until theyve been tested in humans and approved by the Food and Drug Administration as safe and effective. (While youre waiting for a male pattern baldness cure, check out these natural remedies for hair loss.)

So while it may be some time before these drugs are availableif everto treat baldless or alopecia, researchers are optimistic about the future. Through this study, we gained a lot of interesting insight into new ways to activate stem cells, says Aimee Flores, a predoctoral trainee in Lowrys lab and first author of the study. The idea of using drugs to stimulate hair growth through hair follicle stem cells is very promising given how many millions of people, both men and women, deal with hair loss. I think weve only just begun to understand the critical role metabolism plays in hair growth and stem cells in general; Im looking forward to the potential application of these new findings for hair loss and beyond.

This 7-year-old girl living with alopecia will inspire you.

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This New, Cutting-Edge Treatment Could Be the End of Baldness - Reader's Digest

The advance of ethical stem cell research continues exponentially. Neurons made from induced pluripotent stem cellswhich were, in turn, made from skin cellshave relieved Parkinsons symptoms in monkeys. From the Nature story:

Takahashis team transformed iPS cells derived from both healthy people and those with Parkinsons into dopamine-producing neurons. They then transplanted these cells intomacaquemonkeys with a form of the disease induced by a neuron-killing toxin.

The transplanted brain cells survived for at least two years and formed connections with the monkeys brain cells, potentially explaining why the monkeys treated with cells began moving around their cages more frequently.

Crucially, Takahashis team found no sign that the transplanted cells had developed into tumours a key concern with treatments that involve pluripotent cells or that they evoked an immune response that couldnt be controlled with immune-suppressing drugs.

Human trials may begin in within a few years.

Two points about this, well three:

First, this study validates George W. Bushs prediction, when he placed mild limitations on federal embryonic stem cell funding,that scientists would be able to find ethical means of furthering regenerative medicine without using embryos.

Second, contrary to embryonic stem cells being the only hope, as so many Bush funding policy opponents claimed,embryonic stem cell research has not advanced nearly as far as adult stem cells and IPSCadvances have.

I keep bringing this up because all through the Bush terms in office, the scientists engaged in a mendacious campaign of hype and outright liesabout the potential and timing of treatments from embryonic stem cell research, as they poo-poohed the potential of alternative methods. But they were wrong and those who supported the Bush policy were right.

In other words, just because the Science Establishment says something, that doesnt make it so. Sometimes the scientists are wrong, or are conflating ideology with science, properly understood.

Third, contrary to animal rights ideologues and others, primate research is absolutely essential to furthering medical science. None of the potential we are seeing in this study could be known without testing on animals before humans.

So, lets hope that IPSCs and adult stem cells continue to advance into the clinical setting. They not only provide hope for efficacious treatmentslets not say curesbut offer a bridge across ethical divides that have roiled the field.

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Ethical Stem Cells Relieve Parkinson's in Monkeys - National Review

Oh no! Not again! Such must be the sentiments of stem cell scientists after a paper to be published in Nature cast cold water on landmark research about editing the genome of a human embryo.

On August 2, a team led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov, of Oregon Health and Science University, announced in Nature that they had successfully deleted a disease-causing faulty gene and replaced it with a healthy copy using the CRISPR-Cas9 technique. Their innovative experiment introduced the CRISPR machinery earlier. When they examined the embryos, they found that they did not contain the faulty sequence.

This discovery was greeted around the world as a first step towards freeing mankind from genetic disorders or towards a eugenicist society, depending on your attitude towards modifying the human genome. Technically, it was a tour de force, as it was relatively easy and accurate and did not result in mosaic embryos.

With 10,000 harmful single-gene mutations known, there is a lot at stake.

However, a closer examination of the exciting paper has sparked a lot of debate amongst stem cell scientists. In a preprint release of a paper in Nature on bioRxiv, Dieter Egli, of Columbia University, and Maria Jasin, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, along with Harvard geneticist George Church, have questioned whether Mitalipovs team has actually succeeded, as the new technique contradicts the conventional wisdom about how fertilisation occurs. They point out that although the disease-causing gene had disappeared, there was no proof that the correct sequence had been inserted.

Furthermore, the DNA from the sperm and the egg are probably not close enough in the brief interval after fertilisation to interact or share genes. Mitalipov and his team had speculated that the embryos used the DNA of the egg as a guide to repair the mutation carried by the sperm.

In my view Egli et al. convincingly provided a series of compelling arguments explaining that the correction of the deleterious mutation by self repair is unlikely to have occurred, Gatan Burgio, a geneticist at the Australian National University told Nature News.

Mitalipov has responded, promising to answer the critiques point by point in the form of a formal peer-reviewed response in a matter of weeks.

Inevitably, this latest breakthrough recalls a string of too-good-to-be true-and too-amazing-to-reject articles about stem cell research. They were published in leading journals, hyped in the media and then crashed and burned. Time will tell whether Mitalipovs paper will be vindicated.

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Landmark stem cell paper questioned - BioEdge

The protein TAZ (green) in the cytoplasm (the region outside of the nuclei, blue) promotes the self-renewal of human embryonic stem cells. Credit: Xingliang Zhou/Ying Lab, USC Stem Cell

Just as beauty exists in the eye of the beholder, a signal depends upon the interpretation of the receiver. According to new USC research published in Stem Cell Reports, a protein called TAZ can convey very different signalsdepending upon not only which variety of stem cell, but also which part of the stem cell receives it.

When it comes to varieties, some stem cells are "nave" blank slates; others are "primed" to differentiate into certain types of more specialized cells. Among the truly nave are mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs), while the primed variety includes the slightly more differentiated mouse epiblast stem cells (EpiSCs) as well as so-called human "ESCs"which may not be true ESCs at all.

In the new study, PhD student Xingliang Zhou and colleagues in the laboratory of Qi-Long Ying demonstrated that nave mouse ESCs don't require TAZ in order to self-renew and produce more stem cells. However, they do need TAZ in order to differentiate into mouse EpiSCs.

The scientists observed an even more nuanced situation for the primed varieties of stem cells: mouse EpiSCs and human ESCs. When TAZ is located in the nucleus, this prompts primed stem cells to differentiate into more specialized cell typesa response similar to that of the nave cells. However, if TAZ is in the cytoplasm, or the region between the nucleus and outer membrane, primed stem cells have the opposite reaction: they self-renew.

"TAZ has stirred up a lot of controversy in our field, because it appears to produce diverse and sometimes opposite effects in pluripotent stem cells," said Ying, senior author and associate professor of stem cell biology and regenerative medicine. "It turns out that TAZ can indeed produce opposite effects, depending upon both its subcellular location and the cell type in question."

First author Zhou added: "TAZ provides a new tool to stimulate stem cells to either differentiate or self-renew. This could have important regenerative medicine applications, including the development of a better way to generate the desired cell types for cell replacement therapy."

Explore further: Study reveals how to better master stem cells' fate

More information: Xingliang Zhou et al, Cytoplasmic and Nuclear TAZ Exert Distinct Functions in Regulating PrimedPluripotency, Stem Cell Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.stemcr.2017.07.019

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The protein TAZ sends 'mixed signals' to stem cells - Phys.Org

Medical researchers and scientists have created all kinds of medical marvels, from brain tissue and cartilage to a heart and a pancreas, by 3D printing stem cells. In Australia, Swinburne University of Technology PhD candidateLilith Caballero Aguilar is currently collaborating on a project with surgeons and researchers at BioFab3D@ACMD, the countrys first bioengineering facility based in a hospital, about how stem cells are fed once theyre inside the body. She is working to develop methods to control the rate of release for growth factors, which stem cells need for development once theyve been implanted, and the research could help doctors use biological 3D printing techniques to regenerate damaged or missing tissue.

Caballero Aguilar says that working alongside surgeons and other university researchers at the facility has had a major impact on her work.

We complement each other. If I have doubt, we can discuss it and reshape the project as we go, which helps to reach a better outcome.At the end of the day, everyone is doing a bit of work in a big project. It feels very rewarding,Caballero Aguilar said.

The facility was established through a partnership between Swinburne, St Vincents Hospital Melbourne, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science, the University of Melbourne,RMIT University, and the University of Wollongong Australia. Biology experts, surgeons, researchers, and biomedical engineers work at the facility to pioneer innovations, like nerves, re-engineered limbs, and tissues.

Cellink Inkredible Bioprinters [Image: Swinburne]

Caballero Aguilars stem cell work is part of two of the facilitys major research projects, one which focuses on repairing damaged muscle fibers and another regarding damaged cartilage regeneration; both are using advanced technologies, like bioprinting, to implant materials into the body, including the handheld 3D Biopen that allows surgeons to draw biomaterials into a patient directly and has been successfully tested, using knee cartilage, on six sheep.

BioPen

She is working to manipulate polymer materials into release mechanisms for stem cell growth factors, which would form part of the 3D bioink drawn into the body. Controlling the delivery of growth factors is very important stem cells take at least six weeks to grow into tissue, so the growth factors need to be slowly released over the entire time period.Caballero Aguilar shakes an oil and water solution at an intense rate, which is called the emulsion method, to create microspheres, which are crosslinked to form a substance thats able to hold the growth factors.

Swinburne Professor of Biomedical Electromaterials Science Simon Moulton, who is Caballero Aguilars supervisor, said that the success of her stem cell research project was helped along by the opportunity to collaborate directly with orthopaedic surgeons and muscle specialists at St Vincents Hospital.

Swinburne PhD candidate Lilith Caballero Aguilar and Professor Simon Moulton in a lab at BioFab3D@ACMD. [Image: Swinburne]

Professor Moulton said, Without this space, Liliths project would be a much smaller project without the translation benefit.It still would be great research done at a very high level, she would have publications and be able to graduate, but working in this collaborative environment, she can achieve all of that, while also having her research go into a clinical outcome that actually has benefit to patients.

Discuss in the Bioprinting Research forum at 3DPB.com.

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Collaboration Key to 3D Bioprinting Stem Cell Research Success at BioFab3D@ACMD in Australia - 3DPrint.com

A pair of English bulldog puppies are the first patients to be successfully treated with a unique therapy a combination of surgery and stem cells developed at the University of California, Davis, to help preserve lower-limb function in children with spina bifida.

(Editorsnote: Photos and b-roll available.)

Because dogs with the birth defect frequently have little control of their hindquarters, they also have little hope for a future. They are typically euthanized as puppies.

At their postsurgery re-check at 4 months old, however, the siblings, named Darla and Spanky, showed off their abilities to walk, run and play to their doctor, veterinary neurosurgeon Beverly Sturges.

The initial results of the surgery are promising, as far as hind limb control, said Sturges. Both dogs seemed to have improved range of motion and control of their limbs.

The dogs have since been adopted, and continue to do well at their home in New Mexico.

Spina bifida occurs when spinal tissue improperly fuses in utero, causing a range of cognitive, mobility, urinary and bowel disabilities in about 1,500 to 2,000 children born in the U.S. each year. The dogs procedure, which involved surgical techniques developed by fetal surgeon Diana Farmer of UC Davis Health together with a cellular treatment developed by stem cell scientists Aijun Wang and Dori Borjesson, director of the universitys Veterinary Institute for Regenerative Cures, represents a major step toward curing spina bifida for both humans and dogs.

Farmer pioneered the use of surgery prior to birth to improve brain development in children with spina bifida. She later showed that prenatal surgery combined with human placenta-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (PMSCs), held in place with a cellular scaffold, helped research lambs born with the disorder walk without noticeable disability.

Sturges wanted to find out if the surgery-plus-stem-cell approach could give dogs closer-to-normal lives along with better chances of survival and adoption. At 10-weeks old, Darla and Spanky were transported from Southern California Bulldog Rescue to the UC Davis veterinary hospital, where they were the first dogs to receive the treatment, this time using canine instead of human PMSCs.

Another distinction for Darla and Spanky is that their treatment occurred after birth, since prenatal diagnosis of spina bifida is not performed on dogs, Sturges explained. The disorder becomes apparent between 1 and 2 weeks of age, when puppies show hind-end weakness, poor muscle tone, incoordination and abnormal use of their tails.

UC Davis is the only place where this type of cross-disciplinary, transformational medicine could happen, according to Farmer.

Its rare to have a combination of excellent medical and veterinary schools and strong commitment to advancing stem cell science at one institution, she said.

UC Davis is also home to the One Healthinitiative aimed at finding novel treatments like these for diseases that affect both humans and animals.

Ive often said that I have the greatest job on the planet, because I get to help kids, Farmer said. Now my job is even better, because I get to help puppies too.

With additional evaluation and U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, Farmer and Wang hope to test the therapy in human clinical trials. Sturges and Borjesson hope to do the same with a canine clinical trial. They hope the outcomes of their work help eradicate spina bifida in dogs and humans.

In the meantime, the team wants dog breeders to send more puppies with spina bifida to UC Davis for treatment and refinements that help the researchers fix an additional hallmark of spina bifida incontinence. While Darla and Spanky are very mobile and doing well on their feet, they still require diapers.

Further analysis of their progress will determine if the surgery improves their incontinence conditions, Sturges said.

Funding for this project was provided by the Veterinary Institute for Regenerative Cures (VIRC) at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, and the Surgical Bioengineering Lab at the UC Davis School of Medicine. Private donations to the veterinary school for stem cell research also contributed to this procedure. Farmer and Wangs spina bifida research is supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Shriners Hospitals for Children and the March of Dimes Foundation.

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Stem Cell Treatment for Children With Spina Bifida Helps Dogs First ... - UC Davis

T

he roots of hair loss run deep: Its linked to hormonal balance, immune response, stem cell signaling, and now, according to new research from University of California, Los Angeles metabolism.

The study, published inNature Cell Biology, finds that the metabolism in the stem cells embedded in hair follicles is different from surrounding cells. When they tinkered with that metabolic pathway in mice, they could either halt hair growth or make it proliferate. The UCLA researchers are now testing out a duo of drugs to try and prompt that hair to grow.

This is a STAT Plus article and is only available to STAT Plus subscribers.To read the full story, subscribe to STAT Plus or log in to your account.Good news: your first 30 days are on us.

Biotech Correspondent

Meghana covers biotech and writes The Readout newsletter.

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A new clue to hair loss: A misbehaving enzyme in follicle stem cells - STAT

Researchers at the University of Queensland (UQ) have developed a stem cell multiplication method that could double the states avocado production.

The growing method could lead to 500 times more avocado plants being supplied to the industry, and could reduce the time it takes for avocado orchards to mature.

Neena Mitter from the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture & Food Innovation, said the technology would be a potential game changer the global avocado industry,which is currently experiencing a backlog of plant orders until 2020.

At present, to supply new trees, the avocado industry follows the same process they have for the last 40 years, which is to take cuttings from high quality trees and root them, Mitter said. However, this is a cumbersome, labour and resource intensive process, as it takes about 18 months from the cutting stage to having a plant for sale, which creates a huge bottleneck for nurseries across the globe in the number of trees that they can supply trees to growers."

The non-GM and environmentally friendly technology, however, can grow and root multiple avocado plants from the shoot tip of an existing plant.

[With the new technology] ten-thousand plants can be generated in a 10m2 room on a soil-less media, Mitter said.

More than 600 plants developed by the stem cell multiplication method will be tested at different sites across Australia, with the research team also looking into whether heat-adapted avocado trees can grow alongside banana plants.

The Queensland Alliance for Agriculture & Food Innovation is a UQ research institute, with funding from the Queensland government.

Link:
Stem cell research could double avo production - Fruitnet

In an ideal situation, these humanized mice would reject foreign stem cells just as a human patient would.

Wu shares senior authorship of the research, which was published Aug. 22 in Cell Reports, with Dale Greiner, PhD, professor in the Program in Molecular Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Leonard Shultz, PhD, professor at the Jackson Laboratory. Former postdoctoral scholars Nigel Kooreman, MD, and Patricia de Almeida, PhD, and graduate student Jonathan Stack, DVM, share lead authorship of the study.

Although these mice are fully functional in their immune response to HIV infection or after transplantation of other tissues, they are unable to completely reject the stem cells, said Kooreman. Understanding why this is, and whether we can overcome this deficiency, is a critical step in advancing stem cell therapies in humans.

Humanized mice are critical preclinical models in many biomedical fields helping to bring basic science into the clinic, but as this work shows, it is critical to frame the question properly, said Greiner. Multiple laboratories remain committed to advancing our understanding and enhancing the function of engrafted human immune systems.

Greiner and Shultz helped to pioneer the use of humanized mice in the 1990s to model human diseases and they provided the mice used in the study.

The researchers were studying pluripotent stem cells, which can become any tissue in the body. They tested the animals immune response to human embryonic stem cells, which are naturally pluripotent, and to induced pluripotent stem cells. Although iPS cells can be made from a patients own tissues, future clinical applications will likely rely on pre-screened, FDA-approved banks of stem cell-derived products developed for specific clinical situations, such as heart muscle cells to repair tissue damaged by a heart attack, or endothelial cells to stimulate new blood vessel growth. Unlike patient-specific iPS cells, these cells would be reliable and immediately available for clinical use. But because they wont genetically match each patient, its likely that they would be rejected without giving the recipients immunosuppressive drugs.

Humanized mice were first developed in the 1980s. Researchers genetically engineered the mice to be unable to develop their own immune system. They then used human immune and bone marrow precursor cells to reconstitute the animals immune system. Over the years subsequent studies have shown that the human immune cells survive better when fragments of the human thymus and liver are also implanted into the animals.

Kooreman and his colleagues found that two varieties of humanized mice were unable to completely reject unrelated human embryonic stem cells or iPS cells, despite the fact that some human immune cells homed to and were active in the transplanted stem cell grafts. In some cases, the cells not only thrived, but grew rapidly to form cancers called teratomas. In contrast, mice with unaltered immune systems quickly dispatched both forms of human pluripotent stem cells.

The researchers obtained similar results when they transplanted endothelial cells derived from the pluripotent stem cells.

To understand more about what was happening, Kooreman and his colleagues created a new mouse model similar to the humanized mice. Instead of reconstituting the animals nonexistent immune systems with human cells, however, they used immune and bone marrow cells from a different strain of mice. They then performed the same set of experiments again.

Unlike the humanized mice, these new mice robustly rejected human pluripotent stem cells as well as mouse stem cells from a genetically mismatched strain of mice. In other words, their newly acquired immune systems appeared to be in much better working order.

Although more research needs to be done to identify the cause of the discrepancy between the two types of animals, the researchers speculate it may have something to do with the complexity of the immune system and the need to further optimize the humanized mouse model to perhaps include other types of cells or signaling molecules. In the meantime, they are warning other researchers of potential pitfalls in using this model to screen for immunosuppressive drugs that could be effective after human stem cell transplants.

Many in the fields of pluripotent stem cell research and regenerative medicine are pushing the use of the humanized mice to study the human immune response, said Kooreman. But if we start to make claims using this model, assuming that these cells wont be rejected by patients, it could be worrisome. Our work clearly shows that, although there is some human immune cell activity, these animals dont fully reconstitute the human immune system.

The researchers are hopeful that recent advances may overcome some of the current models limitations.

The immune system is highly complex and there still remains much we need to learn, said Shultz. Each roadblock we identify will only serve as a landmark as we navigate the future. Already, weve seen recent improvements inhumanized mousemodels that foster enhancement of human immune function.

Wu is a member of Stanford Bio-X, the Stanford Cancer Institute and the Stanford Child Health Research Institute. He is also the Simon H. Stertzer Professor.

Additional Stanford co-authors are former research assistant Raman Nelakanti; former postdoctoral scholars Sebastian Diecke, PhD, and Veronica Sanchez-Freire, PhD; postdoctoral scholar Ning-Yi Shao, MD, PhD; instructor Elena Matsa, PhD; and associate professor of pathology Andrew Connolly, MD, PhD.

The research was funded by the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, the National Institutes of Health (grants R01HL132875, R01HL133272, P30CA034196, UC4DK104218 and T32OD01112) and the Helmsley Charitable Trust.

Stanfords Department of Medicine also supported the work.

Original post:
Mouse model of human immune system inadequate for stem cell ... - Stanford Medical Center Report

University of North Carolina Health Careresearchers have made strides toward a stem cell treatment for lung diseases such as pulmonary fibrosis, COPD, and cystic fibrosis.

In fact, they are discussing the start of clinical trials with regulatory authorities.

The team discussed its work in two recent studies. One provedthat it is possible to isolate lung stem cells with a relatively non-invasive procedure. The other showed that stem cells reduce fibrosis in rats with pulmonary fibrosis.

The first study, in the journal Respiratory Research, was titledDerivation of therapeutic lung spheroid cells from minimally invasive transbronchial pulmonary biopsies.The second, inStem Cells Translational Medicine, was Safety and Efficacy of Allogeneic Lung Spheroid Cells in a Mismatched Rat Model of Pulmonary Fibrosis.

This is the first time anyone has generated potentially therapeutic lung stem cells from minimally invasive biopsy specimens, Dr. Jason Lobo, director of the universitys lung transplant and interstitial lung disease program,said in a press release. Hewas co-senior author of both studies.

We think the properties of these cells make them potentially therapeutic for a wide range of lung fibrosis diseases, added Dr. Ke Cheng, who led the studies with Lobo. He is anassociate professor in North Carolina State Universitys Department of Molecular Biomedical Sciences.

The research team had previously homed in on stem and support cells they could isolate from a lung tissue sample and grow in a lab. The tissue formed sphere-like structures in a lab dish, prompting the scientists to call them lung spheroid cells.

In 2015, the team showed that these cells had potent regenerative properties in animals with lung diseases. In fact, the stem cells they cultivated outperformed another type called mesenchymal stem cells.

Their latest project involved gathering lung spheroid cells from patients with various lung diseases. They used a procedure calleda transbronchial biopsy thatcan be done in a doctors office.

We snip tiny, seed-sized samples of airway tissue using a bronchoscope, Lobo said. This method involves far less risk to the patient than does a standard, chest-penetrating surgical biopsy of lung tissue.

From this tiny piece of airway, researchers gathered stem cells, then allowed them to multiply because stem cell treatments require infusions of millions of such cells.

When they injected the cells intravenously into mice, the discovered that most found their way into the animals lungs.

These cells are from the lung, and so in a sense theyre happiest, so to speak, living and working in the lung, Cheng said.

The team then tested the treatment in rats exposed to a chemical that triggers lung fibrosis. The lung spheroid cells gave rise to healthy lung cells, reducing both inflammation and fibrosis in the animals lungs.

Also, the treatment was safe and effective whether the lung spheroid cells were derived from the recipients own lungs or from the lungs of an unrelated strain of rats, Lobo said. In other words, even if the donated stem cells were foreign, they did not provoke a harmful immune reaction in the recipient animals, as transplanted tissue normally does.

The researchers said that in humans their goal would be to use patients own stem cells to minimize the risk of immune reactions. But because large quantities of cells are needed, it might be necessary to gather cells from healthy volunteers or organ donation networks as well.

Our vision is that we will eventually set up a universal cell donor bank, Cheng said.

The team is in discussions with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration aimed at starting the first human study by years end. The first trial would include a small group of pulmonary fibrosis patients. The team also hopes their spheroid stem cell therapy will help patients with other lung diseases.

Originally posted here:
Trial of Lung Disease Stem Cell Therapy Could Come by Year's End - Lung Disease News