Category Archives: Stem Cell Therapy

Stem Cell Therapy and Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) Therapy

By: DR Kyle Kinmon

Visit link:
Stem Cell Therapy and Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) Therapy - Video

A new study shows that adipose-derived human stem cells, which can become vital tissues such as bone, may be highly resistant to the common chemotherapy drug methotrexate (MTX). The preliminary finding from lab testing may prove significant because MTX causes bone tissue damage in many patients.

MTX is used to treat cancers including acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common form of childhood cancer. A major side effect of the therapy, however, is a loss of bone mineral density. Other bone building stem cells, such as bone marrow derived stem cells, have not withstood MTX doses well.

"Kids undergo chemotherapy at such an important time when they should be growing, but instead they are introduced to this very harsh environment where bone cells are damaged with these drugs," said Olivia Beane, a Brown University graduate student in the Center for Biomedical Engineering and lead author of the study. "That leads to major long-term side effects including osteoporosis and bone defects. If we found a stem cell that was resistant to the chemotherapeutic agent and could promote bone growth by becoming bone itself, then maybe they wouldn't have these issues."

Stem cell survivors

Originally Beane was doing much more basic research. She was looking for chemicals that could help purify adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) from mixed cell cultures to encourage their proliferation. Among other things, she she tried chemotherapy drugs, figuring that maybe the ASCs would withstand a drug that other cells could not. The idea that this could help cancer patients did not come until later.

In the study published online in the journal Experimental Cell Research, Beane exposed pure human ASC cultures, "stromal vascular fraction" (SVF) tissue samples (which include several cell types including ASCs), and cultures of human fibroblast cells, to medically relevant concentrations of chemotherapy drugs for 24 hours. Then she measured how those cell populations fared over the next 10 days. She also measured the ability of MTX-exposed ASCs, both alone and in SVF, to proliferate and turn into other tissues.

Beane worked with co-authors fellow center member Eric Darling, the Manning Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology, Physiology and Biotechnology, and research assistant Vera Fonseca.

They observed that three chemotherapy drugs -- cytarabine, etoposide, and vincristine -- decimated all three groups of cells, but in contrast to the fibroblast controls, the ASCs withstood a variety of doses of MTX exceptionally well (they resisted vincristine somewhat, too). MTX had little or no effect on ASC viability, cell division, senescence, or their ability to become bone, fat, or cartilage tissue when induced to do so.

The SVF tissue samples also withstood MTX doses well. That turns out to be significant, Darling said, because that's the kind of tissue that would actually be clinically useful if an ASC-based therapy were ever developed for cancer patients. Hypothetically, fresh SVF could be harvested from the fat of a donor, as it was for the study, and injected into bone tissue, delivering ASCs to the site.

To understand why the ASCs resist MTX, the researchers conducted further tests. MTX shuts down DNA biosynthesis by binding the protein dihydrofolate reductase so that it is unavailable to assist in that essential task. The testing showed that ASCs ramped up dihydrofolate reductase levels upon exposure to the drug, meaning they produced enough to overcome a clinically relevant dose of MTX.

See original here:
Stem cell type resists chemotherapy drug

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

2-Jul-2014

Contact: Kristina Grifantini press@salk.edu Salk Institute

LA JOLLA-Researchers around the world have turned to stem cells, which have the potential to develop into any cell type in the body, for potential regenerative and disease therapeutics.

Now, for the first time, researchers at the Salk Institute, with collaborators from Oregon Health & Science University and the University of California, San Diego, have shown that stem cells created using two different methods are far from identical. The finding could lead to improved avenues for developing stem cell therapies as well as a better understanding of the basic biology of stem cells.

The researchers discovered that stem cells created by moving genetic material from a skin cell into an empty egg cell-rather than coaxing adult cells back to their embryonic state by artificially turning on a small number of genes-more closely resemble human embryonic stem cells, which are considered the gold standard in the field.

"These cells created using eggs' cytoplasm have fewer reprogramming issues, fewer alterations in gene expression levels and are closer to real embryonic stem cells," says co-senior author Joseph R. Ecker, professor and director of Salk's Genomic Analysis Laboratory and co-director of the Center of Excellence for Stem Cell Genomics. The results of the study were published today in Nature.

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) are directly pulled from unused embryos discarded from in-vitro fertilization, but ethical and logistical quandaries have restricted their access. In the United States, federal funds have limited the use of hESCs so researchers have turned to other methods to create stem cells. Most commonly, scientists create induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells by starting with adult cells (often from the skin) and adding a mixture of genes that, when expressed, regress the cells to a pluripotent stem-cell state. Researchers can then coax the new stem cells to develop into cells that resemble those in the brain or in the heart, giving scientists a valuable model for studying human disease in the lab.

Over the past year, a team at OHSU built upon a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer (the same that is used for cloning an organism, such as Dolly the sheep) to transplant the DNA-containing nucleus of a skin cell into an empty human egg, which then naturally matures into a group of stem cells.

Ecker, holder of the Salk International Council Chair in Genetics, teamed up with Shoukhrat Mitalipov, developer of the new technique and director of the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy at OHSU, and UCSD assistant professor Louise Laurent to carry out the first direct comparison of the two approaches. The scientists created four lines of nuclear transfer stem cells all using eggs from a single donor, along with seven lines of iPS cells and two lines of the gold standard hESCs. All cell lines were shown to be able to develop into multiple cell types and had nearly identical DNA content contained within them.

Read the rest here:
Some stem cell methods closer to 'gold standard' than others

Durham, NC (PRWEB) July 01, 2014

Medication and minimally invasive surgery to implant a sling can provide relief for millions of people who suffer from stress urinary incontinence (SUI), but not everyone responds to these therapeutic methods. A new study in the current STEM CELLS Translational Medicine tests the safety and effectiveness of stem cells as an alternative SUI treatment.

SUI results when the pelvic floor muscles, which support the bladder and urethra, weaken to the point that the muscles are not able to prevent urine from flowing when pressure is placed on the abdomen, such as when the person laughs or coughs. It occurs most often in women, due to childbirth and pregnancy.

Tissue engineering offers an attractive method to regenerate sphincter muscle, explained the studys corresponding author, Kirsi Kuismanen, from the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Tampere University Hospital (TUH) in Finland. She and her TUH colleagues teamed up with researchers from the Adult Stem Cell Group of BioMediTech in Tampere and the University of Twente in the Netherlands on the study.

Previously, various different cell sources, such as skeletal muscle-derived stem cells (SkMSCs), mesenchymal stem cells derived from bone marrow (BMSCs) and adipose stem cells (ASCs), have been studied for treating urinary incontinence. The SkMSCs and BMSCs would be a potential alternative for incontinence therapy. However, when compared to ASCs, the major limitation of SkMSCs and BMSCs is the difficulty to obtain these cells in large quantities, Dr. Kuismanen said.

The study involved five SUI patients who either did not want a sling implant or had undergone implants but they proved unsuccessful. They were treated with ASCs combined with bovine collagen gel, which is a bulking agent, and saline.

Prior to the treatment, the ASCs were isolated from subcutaneous fat and expanded for three weeks in a laboratory. The mixture of ASCs and collagen was injected in the patients who were followed for three, six and 12 months after the injections. The primary end point was a cough test to measure the effect of the treatment. Validated questionnaires were used to determine the subjective cure rate.

After six months, one out of five patients displayed a negative cough test with full bladder. At one year, the cough test was negative with three patients; two were satisfied with the results and ended their treatment for SUI. Validated questionnaires showed some subjective improvement in all five patients.

This is the first study describing the use of autologous ASCs in combination with collagen gel for female SUI treatments, Dr. Kuismanen said. Thus far, the treatment with autologous ASCs has proven safe and well tolerated. However, the feasibility and efficacy of the treatment were not optimal so additional research is needed to develop SUI injection therapies.

New treatments are needed for this common condition that affects millions of women, said Anthony Atala, M.D., editor of STEM CELLS Translational Medicine and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The current study, believed to be the first to evaluate adipose-derived stem cells in combination with collagen, adds to the body of knowledge about the safety and effectiveness of stem cell treatments for stress urinary incontinence.

The rest is here:
Studies Test Effectiveness and Safety of Stem Cell Treatment for Urinary Incontinence