Category Archives: Stem Cell Videos

Washington, November 2 (ANI): An injection of banked sperm-producing stem cells can restore fertility in male primates who become sterile due to the side effects of cancer drugs, researchers say.

In the animal study by researchers at the University Of Pittsburgh School Of Medicine And Magee-Womens Research Institute, previously frozen stem cells restored production of sperm that successfully fertilized eggs to produce early embryos.

Some cancer drugs work by destroying rapidly dividing cells. As it is not possible to discriminate between cancer cells and other rapidly dividing cells in the body, the precursor cells involved in making sperm can be inadvertently wiped out leaving the patient infertile, said senior investigator Kyle Orwig from Magee-Womens Research Institute.

"Men can bank sperm before they have cancer treatment if they hope to have biological children later in their lives," Orwig said.

"But that is not an option for young boys who haven't gone through puberty, can't provide a sperm sample, and are many years away from thinking about having babies," he said.

Even very young boys, though, have spermatogonial stem cells in their testicular tissue that are poised to begin producing sperm during puberty.

To see whether it was possible to restore fertility using these cells, Dr. Orwig and his team biopsied the testes of prepubertal and adult male macaque monkeys and cryopreserved the cells from the small samples. The monkeys were then treated with chemotherapy agents known to impair fertility.

A few months after chemotherapy treatment, the team re-introduced each monkey's own spermatogonial stem cells back in to his testes using an ultrasound-guided technique. Sperm production was established from transplanted cells in nine out of 12 adult animals and three out of five prepubertal animals after they reached maturity.

In another test, spermatogonial stem cells from other unrelated monkeys were transplanted into infertile animals, which created sperm with the DNA fingerprint of the donor to allow easy tracking of their origin.

In lab tests, sperm from transplant recipients successfully fertilized 81 eggs, leading to embryos that developed to the morula and blastocyst stages, which are the stages that normally precede implantion in the mother's uterus. Donor parentage was confirmed in seven of the embryos.

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Sperm-producing stem cell jab 'may restore male fertility after cancer treatment'

TORONTO -- Scientists have long been searching for a way to preserve fertility in young boys who undergo cancer treatments and may be unable to father a child later in life. That's because chemotherapy and radiation can destroy the stem cells in the testes that give rise to sperm with the onset of puberty.

Now researchers, using macaque monkeys, have shown that small samples of testicular tissue that have been frozen can be thawed and re-implanted following chemotherapy to begin producing sperm.

The success in monkeys raises hope that the technique might one day be safely used in human males left infertile by life-saving treatment for cancer, say researchers, whose work is described in the November issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell, published Thursday.

"This demonstrates in an animal model that in fact it's feasible," said principal researcher Kyle Orwig, director of the fertility preservation program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Not only were most of the animals able to produce sperm cells, but sperm from one macaque was able to fertilize the eggs from female macaques, he added.

The monkey eggs were fertilized in the lab and allowed to grow through cell pision only to the point in which they would have been able to implant in the female animal's uterine wall. There were no live macaque offspring produced.

Not all cancer therapy leads to permanent infertility -- that depends on the type and dose of chemo drugs used, as well as the areas of the body targeted by radiation.

Still, uncertainty about one's ability to have a family in the future is no trivial matter for childhood cancer patients, most of whom must contend with a range of adverse health effects arising from treatment, often for the rest of their lives.

"Cancer patients report that their fertility status has a major impact on their quality of life, both in terms of their psychological well-being, but also their ability to develop relationships," Orwig said.

In fact, there are several clinics around the world that have preserved testicular tissue from pre-pubescent boys subsequently treated for cancer, "in anticipation that (their) stem cells can be used in the future to achieve a pregnancy," he said.

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Stem cells reverse chemo-induced infertility in monkeys: Next step humans?

Cancer Stem Cells Capture Attention of Scientists x264
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Cancer Stem Cells Capture Attention of Scientists x264 - Video

International Academy of Cardiology: Dinender K. Singla, MD: STEM CELLS FOR CARDIAC REGENERATION
STEM CELLS FOR CARDIAC REGENERATION IN THE DIABETIC AND NON-DIABETIC HEART Dinender K. Singla, MD, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA Presented at the: International Academy of Cardiology 17th World Congress on Heart Disease Annual Scientific Sessions 2012 Toronto, ON, Canada July 27-30, 2012 Congress Chairman: Asher Kimchi, MD http://www.CardiologyOnline.com Cardiology Online To read more about this presentation click here to download the Word file http://www.cardiologyonline.comFrom:cardiologyonlineViews:0 0ratingsTime:01:19More inScience Technology

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International Academy of Cardiology: Dinender K. Singla, MD: STEM CELLS FOR CARDIAC REGENERATION - Video

The potential of regenerative medicine
Alan Russell: The potential of regenerative medicine http://www.youtube.com http://www.ted.com Alan Russell studies regenerative medicine -- a breakthrough way of thinking about disease and injury by helping the body to rebuild itself. He shows how engineered tissue that "speaks the body #39;s language" has helped a man regrow his lost fingertip, how stem cells can rebuild damaged heart muscle, and how cell therapy can regenerate the skin of burned soldiers. This new, low-impact medicine comes just in time, Russell says -- our aging population, with its steeply rising medical bills, will otherwise (and soon) cause a crisis in health care systems around the world. Some graphic medical imagery.From:BroadcastBCViews:1 0ratingsTime:19:30More inScience Technology

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The potential of regenerative medicine - Video

Hometown Heroes: Local saves leukemia patient #39;s life
She didn #39;t know her name or where she lived, but Sonya Kelly didn #39;t hesitate when the call came from the National Marrow Donor Program requesting that she donate stem cells to save a leukemia patient #39;s life. On September 11, 2012 Kelly accepted the request, and traveled to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson where she underwent the six hour procedure to donate her stem cells. Kelly says it #39;s something she thinks anyone would do. "I still don #39;t know her name for confidentiality reasons, but I do know that since I was born healthy I have a responsibility to help someone in need if I can, " said Kelly. Kelly is also donates blood regularly, and is a registered a organ donor. The Hattiesburg native registered online to be a donor in 2008, but didn #39;t hear back from the donor program until 2012.From:MsReporter77Views:1 0ratingsTime:01:54More inNews Politics

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Hometown Heroes: Local saves leukemia patient's life - Video

The idea of taking a mature cell and removing its identity (nuclear reprogramming) so that it can then become any kind of cell, holds great promise for repairing damaged tissue or replacing bone marrow after chemotherapy.

Hot on the heels of his recent Nobel prize Dr John B. Gurdon has published in BioMed Central's open access journal Epigenetics and Chromatin research showing that histone H3.3 deposited by the histone-interacting protein HIRA is a key step in reverting nuclei to a pluripotent type, capable of being any one of many cell types.

All of an individual's cells have the same DNA, yet these cells become programmed, as the organism matures, into different types such as heart, or lung or brain.

To achieve this different genes are more or less permanently switched off in each cell lineage. As an embryo grows, after a certain number of divisions, it is no longer possible for cells which have gone down the pathway to become something else.

For example heart cells cannot be converted into lung tissue, and muscle cells cannot form bone.

One way to reprogram DNA is to transfer the nucleus of a mature cell into an unfertilized egg. Proteins and other factors inside the egg alter the DNA switching some genes on and other off until it resembles the DNA of a pluripotent cell. However there seem to be some difficulties with this method in completely wiping the cell's 'memory'.

One of the mechanisms regulating the activation of genes is chromatin and in particular histones. DNA is wrapped around histones and alteration in how the DNA is wound changes which genes are available to the cell.

In order to understand how nuclear reprogramming works Dr Gurdon's team transplanted a mouse nucleus into a frog oocyte (Xenopus laevis). They added fluorescently tagged histones by microinjection, so that they could see where in the cell and nucleus the these histones collected.

Prof Gurdon explained, "Using real-time microscopy it became apparent that from 10 hours onwards H3.3 (the histone involved with active genes) expressed in the oocyte became incorporated into the transplanted nucleus.

When we looked in detail at the gene Oct4, which is known to be involved in making cells pluripotent, we found that H3.3 was incorporated into Oct4, and that this coincided with the onset of transcription from the gene." Prof Gurdon's team also found that Hira, a protein required to incorporate H3.3 into chromatin, was also required for nuclear reprogramming.

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How to make stem cells - nuclear reprogramming moves a step forward

ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2012) A team of Duke Medicine researchers has engineered cartilage from induced pluripotent stem cells that were successfully grown and sorted for use in tissue repair and studies into cartilage injury and osteoarthritis. The finding is reported online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and suggests that induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs, may be a viable source of patient-specific articular cartilage tissue.

"This technique of creating induced pluripotent stem cells -- an achievement honored with this year's Nobel Prize in medicine for Shimya Yamanaka of Kyoto University -- is a way to take adult stem cells and convert them so they have the properties of embryonic stem cells," said Farshid Guilak, PhD, Laszlo Ormandy Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Duke and senior author of the study.

"Adult stems cells are limited in what they can do, and embryonic stem cells have ethical issues," Guilak said. "What this research shows in a mouse model is the ability to create an unlimited supply of stem cells that can turn into any type of tissue -- in this case cartilage, which has no ability to regenerate by itself."

Articular cartilage is the shock absorber tissue in joints that makes it possible to walk, climb stairs, jump and perform daily activities without pain. But ordinary wear-and-tear or an injury can diminish its effectiveness and progress to osteoarthritis. Because articular cartilage has a poor capacity for repair, damage and osteoarthritis are leading causes of impairment in older people and often requires joint replacement.

In their study, the Duke researchers, led by Brian O. Diekman, PhD, a post-doctoral associate in orthopaedic surgery, aimed to apply recent technologies that have made iPSCs a promising alternative to other tissue engineering techniques, which use adult stem cells derived from the bone marrow or fat tissue.

One challenge the researchers sought to overcome was developing a uniformly differentiated population of chondrocytes, cells that produce collagen and maintain cartilage, while culling other types of cells that the powerful iPSCs could form.

To achieve that, the researchers induced chondrocyte differentiation in iPSCs derived from adult mouse fibroblasts by treating cultures with a growth medium. They also tailored the cells to express green fluorescent protein only when the cells successfully became chondrocytes. As the iPSCs differentiated, the chondrocyte cells that glowed with the green fluorescent protein were easily identified and sorted from the undesired cells.

The tailored cells also produced greater amounts of cartilage components, including collagen, and showed the characteristic stiffness of native cartilage, suggesting they would work well repairing cartilage defects in the body.

"This was a multi-step approach, with the initial differentiation, then sorting, and then proceeding to make the tissue," Diekman said. "What this shows is that iPSCs can be used to make high quality cartilage, either for replacement tissue or as a way to study disease and potential treatments."

Diekman and Guilak said the next phase of the research will be to use human iPSCs to test the cartilage-growing technique.

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Researchers engineer cartilage from pluripotent stem cells

Deep within the medulla of the adrenal glands, microscopic chromaffin cells release the two hormones adrenaline and enkephalin to give that rush of energy when we are frightened or that second wind brought on by heavy exercise. According to a study published in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine, a research team in Europe discovered a way to obtain these cells from adult humans and then isolate and force them to become neurons in the lab, bringing researchers one step closer to finding new treatments for neurodegenerative diseases and chronic pain.

Durham, NC (PRWEB) October 29, 2012

Monika Ehrhart-Bornstein, Ph.D., of Dresden University of Technologys Center for Regenerative Therapies (Germany), was a lead investigator on the team. Chromaffin progenitor cells seem to be a promising cell source due to the potential use in autologous transplantations, which avoids the possibility of immune rejection, she explained. Our team had recently described how we isolated chromaffin progenitor cells from the adrenal glands of cows and then treated them so that they differentiated into functional neurons. In this subsequent study, we wanted to learn whether these cells could also be obtained from adult human adrenal glands and then forced to differentiate into neurons, as a prerequisite for future use in transplantation trials.

Dr. Ehrhart-Bornstein collaborated with Dr. Claudia Cavadas, professor at the Center for Neurosciences and Cell Biology, University of Coimbra, Portugal, in leading the team of researchers from both universities on the study. They adapted their bovine study method to obtain and isolate the human cells and then treated them with growth factor. When they examined the cells six days later, they had indeed differentiated into neuron-like cells.

This study both proves the existence of chromaffin progenitor cells in the human adrenal medulla and demonstrates that they can be isolated, Cavadas said. These cells may open new perspectives and challenges in the field of regenerative medicine, especially regarding their potential use in the treatment of neurodegenerative and neuroendocrine diseases.

Dr. Ehrhart-Bornstein added, While protocols need to be established to entirely remove other cell types from progenitor cultures for their therapeutic use, the potential of these progenitor cells to acquire both neuronal and chromaffin cell phenotypes is unquestionable, making them an interesting new cell source for cell-based therapies. The isolation and characterization of these valuable cells from human adrenals is the first step toward their potential future use in transplantation therapies.

These cells are not only an interesting source for cell therapy, said Anthony Atala, M.D., Editor of STEM CELLS Translational Medicine and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, they may contribute to a better understanding of adrenal disease and dysfunction.

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The full article, Isolation, characterization and differentiation of progenitor cells from human adult adrenal medulla, can be accessed at http://www.stemcellstm.com/content.

About STEM CELLS Translational Medicine: STEM CELLS TRANSLATIONAL MEDICINE (SCTM), published by AlphaMed Press, is a monthly peer-reviewed publication dedicated to significantly advancing the clinical utilization of stem cell molecular and cellular biology. By bridging stem cell research and clinical trials, SCTM will help move applications of these critical investigations closer to accepted best practices.

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Stem Cells Behind ‘Adrenaline Rush’ Could Offer Hope for Chronic Pain Sufferers

Public release date: 29-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Sarah Avery sarah.avery@duke.edu 919-660-1306 Duke University Medical Center

DURHAM, N.C. A team of Duke Medicine researchers has engineered cartilage from induced pluripotent stem cells that were successfully grown and sorted for use in tissue repair and studies into cartilage injury and osteoarthritis.

The finding is reported online Oct. 29, 2012, in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and suggests that induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs, may be a viable source of patient-specific articular cartilage tissue.

"This technique of creating induced pluripotent stem cells an achievement honored with this year's Nobel Prize in medicine for Shimya Yamanaka of Kyoto University - is a way to take adult stem cells and convert them so they have the properties of embryonic stem cells," said Farshid Guilak, PhD, Laszlo Ormandy Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at Duke and senior author of the study.

"Adult stems cells are limited in what they can do, and embryonic stem cells have ethical issues," Guilak said. "What this research shows in a mouse model is the ability to create an unlimited supply of stem cells that can turn into any type of tissue in this case cartilage, which has no ability to regenerate by itself."

Articular cartilage is the shock absorber tissue in joints that makes it possible to walk, climb stairs, jump and perform daily activities without pain. But ordinary wear-and-tear or an injury can diminish its effectiveness and progress to osteoarthritis. Because articular cartilage has a poor capacity for repair, damage and osteoarthritis are leading causes of impairment in older people and often requires joint replacement.

In their study, the Duke researchers, led by Brian O. Diekman, PhD., a post-doctoral associate in orthopaedic surgery, aimed to apply recent technologies that have made iPSCs a promising alternative to other tissue engineering techniques, which use adult stem cells derived from the bone marrow or fat tissue.

One challenge the researchers sought to overcome was developing a uniformly differentiated population of chondrocytes, cells that produce collagen and maintain cartilage, while culling other types of cells that the powerful iPSCs could form.

To achieve that, the researchers induced chondrocyte differentiation in iPSCs derived from adult mouse fibroblasts by treating cultures with a growth medium. They also tailored the cells to express green fluorescent protein only when the cells successfully became chondrocytes. As the iPSCs differentiated, the chondrocyte cells that glowed with the green fluorescent protein were easily identified and sorted from the undesired cells.

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Duke researchers engineer cartilage from pluripotent stem cells