Category Archives: Stem Cell Videos

A 10-year-old boy has been infused with stem cells harvested from the bone marrow of his brother to treat him for thalassaemia a disorder caused by destruction of red blood cells. Called allogeneic transplantation of stem cells, this was done at Kovai Medical Center and Hospital.

D. Dhanush may not have to undergo expensive and excruciating blood transfusion anymore if his body accepts the donor cells. But his condition will have to be evaluated very minutely for the next two years to confirm that the cells donated by his brother have been received well and adapted him.

Presenting the boy before media persons, Clinical Haematologist and Head of the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit T. Rajasekar explained that transplantation was of two types autologous and allogeneic.

The autologous procedure involves harvesting of stem cells from the patients themselves (those suffering from thalassaemia or leukaemia). The extracted cells are frozen and stored for high dose treatment.

After being treated, these are infused into the patient through a vein. This procedure was done for one person suffering from myeloma (cancer of plasma cells or white blood cells that produce anti-bodies that help fight infections/diseases) and another with a relapsed lymphoma (cancer of the lymphocytes cells that are part of immune system).

Under the allogeneic procedure, matching stem cells from a donor are used. Mostly, these cells are from siblings or a close relative as they need to pass the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) matching test. HLA matching is required, or the cells will be rejected by the recipient. Ideally, it is sibling whose cells will match because he or she will have the HLA from both parents. It is the combination of HLAs from both parents that are found in the children.

The cells can be harvested from the marrow or from the blood. In the case presented on Tuesday, Dr. Rajasekar said the cells were brought out of the bone marrow in Dhanushs brother and into his blood, from where these were harvested.

Chairman of the hospital Nalla G. Palaniswami said the tough procedure was performed by the new Comprehensive Cancer Centre, which was gradually bringing in specialists of all sub-specialities of cancer care. Only then can this be called a comprehensive centre, he said.

The hospital would form a KMCH Foundation, which would use funds from donors to treat poor children suffering from cancer and some other disorders that required expensive treatment.

The stem cell transplantation that Dhanush, the son of a police head constable, underwent cost Rs.12 lakh. Of this, Rs.9 lakh was provided by a donor, Dr. Palaniswami said. Dean of the hospital V. Kumaran and Head of Department of Interventional Radiology Mathew Cherian spoke on how the cancer centre was established and how developments were being made.

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Stem cell transplantation for boy with thalassaemia

ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2012) The process researchers use to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) -- a special type of stem cell that can be made in the lab from any type of adult cell -- is time consuming and inefficient. To speed things up, researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) turned to kinase inhibitors. These chemical compounds block the activity of kinases, enzymes responsible for many aspects of cellular communication, survival, and growth.

As they outline in a paper published September 25 in Nature Communications, the team found several kinase inhibitors that, when added to starter cells, help generate many more iPSCs than the standard method. This new capability will likely speed up research in many fields, better enabling scientists around the world to study human disease and develop new treatments.

"Generating iPSCs depends on the regulation of communication networks within cells," explained Tariq Rana, Ph.D., program director in Sanford-Burnham's Sanford Children's Health Research Center and senior author of the study. "So, when you start manipulating which genes are turned on or off in cells to create pluripotent stem cells, you are probably activating a large number of kinases. Since many of these active kinases are likely inhibiting the conversion to iPSCs, it made sense to us that adding inhibitors might lower the barrier."

According to Tony Hunter, Ph.D., professor in the Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and director of the Salk Institute Cancer Center, "The identification of small molecules that improve the efficiency of generating iPSCs is an important step forward in being able to use these cells therapeutically. Tariq Rana's exciting new work has uncovered a class of protein kinase inhibitors that override the normal barriers to efficient iPSC formation, and these inhibitors should prove useful in generating iPSCs from new sources for experimental and ultimately therapeutic purposes." Hunter, a kinase expert, was not involved in this study.

The promise of iPSCs

At the moment, the only treatment option available to many heart failure patients is a heart transplant. Looking for a better alternative, many researchers are coaxing stem cells into new heart muscle. In Alzheimer's disease, researchers are also interested in stem cells, using them to reproduce a person's own malfunctioning brain cells in a dish, where they can be used to test therapeutic drugs. But where do these stem cells come from? Since the advent of iPSC technology, the answer in many cases is the lab. Like their embryonic cousins, iPSCs can be used to generate just about any cell type -- heart, brain, or muscle, to name a few -- that can be used to test new therapies or potentially to replace diseased or damaged tissue.

It sounds simple enough: you start with any type of differentiated cell, such as skin cells, add four molecules that reprogram the cells' genomes, and then try to catch those that successfully revert to unspecialized iPSCs. But the process takes a long time and isn't very efficient -- you can start with thousands of skin cells and end up with just a few iPSCs.

Inhibiting kinases to make more iPSCs

Zhonghan Li, a graduate student in Rana's laboratory, took on the task of finding kinase inhibitors that might speed up the iPSC-generating process. Scientists in the Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics, Sanford-Burnham's drug discovery facility, provided Li with a collection of more than 240 chemical compounds that inhibit kinases. Li painstakingly added them one-by-one to his cells and waited to see what happened. Several kinase inhibitors produced many more iPSCs than the untreated cells -- in some cases too many iPSCs for the tiny dish housing them. The most potent inhibitors targeted three kinases in particular: AurkA, P38, and IP3K.

Working with the staff in Sanford-Burnham's genomics, bioinformatics, animal modeling, and histology core facilities -- valuable resources and expertise available to all Sanford-Burnham scientists and the scientific community at large -- Rana and Li further confirmed the specificity of their findings and even nailed down the mechanism behind one inhibitor's beneficial actions.

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Making it easier to make stem cells: Kinase inhibitors lower barrier to producing stem cells in lab

Public release date: 25-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: David Eve cellmedicinect@gmail.com Cell Transplantation Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair

Tampa, Fla. (Sep. 25, 2012) In a study to investigate how transplanted islet cells can differentiate and mature into insulin-producing pancreatic cells, a team of Japanese researchers found that using a specific set of transcription factors (proteins that bind to specific DNA sequences) could be transduced into mouse pancreatic stem cells (mPSCs) using Sendai virus (SeV), a mouse influenza virus, as a carrier, or vector. The study is published in a recent issue of Cell Medicine [3(1)], now freely available on-line at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/cm.

"Diabetes is one of the most serious and prevalent metabolic diseases," said study co-author Dr. Hiroshi Yukawa, Department of Advanced Medicine in Biotechnology and Robotics, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine. "Islet cell transplantation has proven effective, however this strategy requires sufficient organ donors."

Given the shortage of donors, the researchers investigated factors that could impact on the expansion and differentiation of pancreatic stem cells (PSCs) into insulin-producing cells using combinations of varieties of transcription factors and the SeV mouse virus to carry the cells, thus increasing the number of functional islet cells available for transplantation.

SeV vectors, said the researchers, are superior to conventional virus vectors because "they do not go through a DNA phase" and can introduce foreign genes without toxicity into a variety of cell types.

The combination of transcription factors that produced the greatest impact on the differentiation of PSCs into insulin cells was Pdx-1 (Pancreatic and duodenal homeobox 1), NeuroD (neurogenic differentiation) and MafA (musculoaponeurotic fibrosarcoma oncogene A). "Our data suggest that the transduction of transcription factors using SeV vectors facilitates mPSCs differentiation into insulin producing cells and showed the possibility of regenerating B-cells by using transduced PSCs," concluded the researchers.

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This research was among those studies presented at the 37th Annual Meeting of the Japan Society for Organ Preservation and Medical Biology (JSOPMB). Sixteen studies were published in this special issue of CELL MEDICINE. The theme of the issue is "Organ/Cell Transplantation and Regenerative Medicine."

Citation. Yukawa, H.; Noguchi, H.; Oishi, K.; Miyamoto, Y.; Inoue, M.; Hasegawa, M.; Hayashi, S. Differentiation of Mouse Pancreatic Stem Cells into Insulin-Producing Cells by Recombinant Sendai Virus-Mediated Gene Transfer Technology Cell Med. 3(1):51-61; 2012.

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Mouse pancreatic stem cells successfully differentiate into insulin producing cells

Public release date: 25-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: David Eve cellmedicinect@gmail.com Cell Transplantation Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair

Tampa, Fla. (Sep. 25, 2012) In a study to determine the best cryopreservation (freezing) solution to maintain induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, a team of researchers from Japan compared 12 kinds of commercially prepared and readily available cryopreservation solutions and found that "Cell Banker 3" out-performed the other 11 solutions by allowing iPS cells to be preserved for a year at degrees C in an undifferentiated state.

The study is published in a recent special issue of Cell Medicine [3(1)], now freely available on-line at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/cm.

"iPS cells are a promising alternative to embryonic stem cells and can be used in place of bone marrow cells, stromal cells and adipose tissue-derived stem cells," said study co-author Hirofumi Noguchi, MD, PhD, Department of Gastroenterological Surgery, Transplant and Surgical Oncology at the Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine. "However, the viability of human iPS cells, like embryonic stem cells, decreases significantly during cryopreservation. A wide variety of cryopreservation solutions have been used, however many are toxic or ineffective for use in extended cryopreservation."

The researchers concluded that Cell Banker 3 showed the highest cell viability and proliferation of all the solutions examined and can be widely used as it does not require any special skills for use.

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This research was among those studies presented at the 37th Annual Meeting of the Japan Society for Organ Preservation and Medical Biology (JSOPMB). Sixteen studies were published in this special issue of CELL MEDICINE. The theme of the issue is "Organ/Cell Transplantation and Regenerative Medicine."

Citation: Miyamoto, Y.; Noguchi, H.; Yukawa, H.; Oishi, K.; Matsushita, K.; Iwata, H.; Hayashi, S. Cryopreservation of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells. Cell Med. 3(1):89-95; 2012.

Contact: Dr. Hirofumi Noguchi, Department of Gastroenterological Surgery, Transplant and Surgical Oncology, Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences, 2-5-1 Shikata, Okayama 700-8558 Japan Tel + 81-86-235-7257; Fax + 81-86-221-8775 Noguchih2006@yahoo.co.jp / noguch-h@cc.okayama-u.ac.jp

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Cryopreservation of induced pluripotent stem cells improved the most by one product

ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2012) A new video protocol in Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE) details an assay to identify brain tumor initiating stem cells from primary brain tumors. Through flow cytometry, scientists separate stem cells from the rest of the tumor, allowing quick and efficient analysis of target cells. This approach has been effectively used to identify similar stem cells in leukemia patients.

"Overall, these tumors are extremely rare, with only around one in 100,000 people being diagnosed with a primary brain cancer," Dr. Sheila Singh, co-author and neurosurgeon from McMaster University, explains. "However, these tumors are the second most common malignancy in the pediatric population, and are behind only leukemia as the cancer with the highest mortality rate."

This publication is significant because it allows scientists to identify, purify, and study brain tumor initiating cells rapidly and without sample loss. Because these stem cells allow scientists to grow films in a petri dish, they serve as an effective model of a tumor expanding in the brain of a patient. Though not all tumors are actively driven by a stem cell, they do drive the most aggressively expanding tumors that lead to a negative prognosis. Typically, the median survival for patients with these types of tumors is fifteen-months, and they are almost uniformly fatal. Currently there is no prospect for a cure.

"Since 2003, we've been perfecting the technique to isolate stem cells from brain tumors," Dr. Singh explains. Stem cells have three key properties: self-renewal, multilineage differentiation, and longevity. Studying stem cells allow scientists to develop therapies that not only target the progenitor cells, but also many of the daughter cells. This is crucial because stem cells are often hard to eradicate without adverse effects to the rest of the body. Once daughter cells are identified, this procedure can be used to target and isolate these cells as well. Singh continues, "By describing the entire hierarchy of tumor progenitor cells, we can describe, characterize and target any point in the lineage. These techniques are going to help us characterize and isolate these cells to learn more about their molecular underpinnings and how to target them."

Given the small amount of tissue available to scientists like Dr. Singh, analytic procedures must be incredibly efficient and precise so as not to waste the precious material. Since Dr. Singh first identified brain tumor initiating cells, she has "recognized the difficulties in working with these tissues." Singh's lab "has focused on optimizing these procedures, which are limited by small cell numbers, to increase the data output." As such, JoVE's unique video-text hybrid serves as an effective means to transmit the procedures to Dr. Singh's colleagues and other cancer researchers. JoVE is the world's first peer-reviewed science video journal indexed in PubMed and MEDLINE.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by The Journal of Visualized Experiments.

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Isolating stem cells from brain tumors

Public release date: 24-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: David Eve celltransplantation@gmail.com Cell Transplantation Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair

Putnam Valley, NY. (Sept. 24, 2012) Two studies in the current issue of Cell Transplantation (21:6), now freely available on-line at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/, demonstrate how the use of magnetic particles are a factor that can positively impact on the targeted delivery of transplanted stem cells and to also provide better cell retention.

A research team from the University of British Columbia used focused magnetic stem cell targeting to improve the delivery and transport of mensenchymal stem cells to the retinas of test rats while researchers from Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute (Los Angeles) injected magnetically enhanced cardiac stem cells to guide the cells to their target to increase cell retention and therapeutic benefit in rat models of ischemic/reperfusion injury.

According to study co-author Dr. Kevin Gregory-Evans, MD, PhD, of the Centre for Macular Degeneration at the University of British Columbia, degeneration of the retina - the cause of macular degeneration as well as other eye diseases - accounts for most cases of blindness in the developed world. To date, the transplantation of mensenchymal stem cells to the damaged retina has had "limited success" because the cells reaching the retina have been in "very low numbers and in random distribution."

Seeking to improve stem cell transplantation to the retina, the researchers magnetized rat mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) using superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs). Via an externally placed magnet, they directed the SPION enhanced cells to the peripheral retinas of the test animals.

"Our results showed that large numbers of blood-borne magnetic MSCs can be targeted to specific retinal locations and produce therapeutically useful biochemical changes in the target tissue," explained Gregory-Evans. "Such an approach would be optimal in focal tissue diseases of the outer retina, such as age-related macular degeneration."

Contact:

Dr. Kevin Gregory-Evans, Centre for Macular Research, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of British Columbia, 2550 Willow St., Vancouver, BC, Canada, V5Z 3N9 Tel. + 1-604-671-0419 Fax. + 1-604-875-4663 Email: kge30@interchange.unc.ca

Citation: Yanai, A.; Hfeli, U. O.; Metcalfe, A. L.; Soema, P.; Addo, L.; Gregory-Evans, C. Y.; Po, K.; Shan, X.; Moritz, O. L.; Gregory-Evans, K. Focused Magnetic Stem Cell Targeting to the Retina Using Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles. Cell Transplant. 21(6):1137-1148; 2012.

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Therapeutic impact of cell transplantation aided by magnetic factor

Part II

Stem cells are part of the new age of medicine. Even if it had its beginnings centuries ago, today, because of advanced technology, its full potential can be powerfully and easily harnessed.

What is the intrinsic nature of a stem cell? There are three types:

But this again is like going through the history of stem cells. This was the general thinking then.

But now, medicine is changing in the way it views life. Why? Because recent studies have since shown strong evidence of something amazing.

Adult stem cells (ASC) were once generally considered multipotent. But today, there is reason to believe that adult stem cells have pluripotent and totipotent capabilities.

Therefore, is science expanding in knowledge, or is this proof that our bodies are evolving, adapting, surviving and even surpassing our own limitations?

The breaking news is this: adult stem cells were identified that appear even more primitive or pluripotent than embryonic stem cells. Translation: A persons very own stem cells can be harvested, stored and reintroduced into the body in strategic organs or tissues via injection.

Another approach is to support the release of stem cells from the bone marrow. The use of adult stem cells transcends and bypasses all ethical boundaries facing embryonic stem cell research and approaches.

Stemness

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How stem cells can heal

(WGBA/NBC) - It is a story that gives hope to pet owners all over the country stem cell therapy for animals suffering from problems like arthritis or hip displaysia.

Stem cells are taken out of the dog's fatty tissue are harvested then injected into problem areas leaving the dogs completely healed.

"We couldn't take him on walks, he just laid around a lot," said Keith Nosowiak, Deniro's owner.

"We'd hear whimpering overnight, she'd take a few steps and she would sit down," said Luther Kortbein, Shadow's owner.

Until two months ago, Deniro suffered from severe arthritis, Shadow from hip displaysia.

Deniro's owner thought he may even have to put his German shepherd down.

"We felt we had a decision to make with his quality of life and being in pain we didn't want him to be in pain," Noskowiak said.

Shadow's owner was willing to try anything to cure her.

"Whatever the cost needed to get this done we were willing to do," Kortbein said.

Then Packerland Veterinary Center offered them stem cell therapy by using the dogs own stem cells and then injecting them back into the bloodstream joints.

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Stem cells revolutionizing veterinary medicine

NEW YORK, Sept. 24, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue:

Cancer Stem Cells Drug Pipeline Update 2012

http://www.reportlinker.com/p0980850/Cancer-Stem-Cells-Drug-Pipeline-Update-2012.html#utm_source=prnewswire&utm_medium=pr&utm_campaign=Biological_Therapy

Treatments designed to target and destroy cancer stem cells may come to revolutionize how we treat cancer. This unique product covers both explicit cancer stem cell drug development and cancer drugs which are inhibitors of the Hedgehog, Notch, and WNT Pathway. These developmental pathways are frequently activated in neoplasms, and particularly in the rare subpopulation of cancer stem cells.

There are today 203 companies plus partners developing 243 cancer stem cells and developmental pathways drugs in 684 developmental projects in cancer. In addition, there are 3 suspended drugs and the accumulated number of ceased drugs over the last years amount to another 123 drugs. Cancer Stem Cells Drug Pipeline Update lists all drugs and gives you a progress analysis on each one of them. Identified drugs are linked to 165 different targets. These targets are further categorized on in the software application by 38 classifications of molecular function and with pathway referrals to BioCarta, KEGG and NetPath.

How May Drug Pipeline Update Be of Use?

* Show investors/board/management that you are right on top of drug development progress in your therapeutic area.

* Find competitors, collaborations partners, M&A candidates etc.

* Jump start competitive drug intelligence operations

* Excellent starting point for world wide benchmarking

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Cancer Stem Cells Drug Pipeline Update 2012

Public release date: 19-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Karen Richardson krchrdsn@wakehealth.edu 336-716-4453 Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. Sept. 19, 2012 New research shows that a special population of stem cells found in cord blood has the innate ability to migrate to the intestine and contribute to the cell population there, suggesting the cells' potential to treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

"These cells are involved in the formation of blood vessels and may prove to be a tool for improving the vessel abnormalities found in IBD," said lead author Graca Almeida-Porada, M.D., Ph.D., a professor at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The research is published in the current print issue of the journal Hepatology.

Up to 1 million Americans have IBD, which is characterized by frequent diarrhea and abdominal pain. IBD actually refers to two conditions ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease in which the intestines become red and swollen and develop ulcers. With IBD, blood vessels in the intestine leak and contribute to inflammation.

While there is currently no cure for IBD, there are drug therapies aimed at reducing inflammation and preventing the immune response. However, these therapies aren't always effective. The long-term aim of the research is to develop an injectable cell therapy to induce tissue recovery.

The work, performed while Almeida-Porada was at the University of Nevada, also involved colleagues from Indiana University School of Medicine. The researchers studied a special population of cells, known as endothelial colony-forming cells, found in cord blood, bone marrow and circulating blood. The finding in 1997 that the cells can contribute to blood vessel formation in adults, not just embryos, initiated the notion of using them for therapy. Studies in humans have validated the ability of these cells to improve reduced blood flow to the limbs and to treat heart diseases.

However, there have been few studies to explore the inherent biologic ability of these cells to home to different organs and contribute to tissue-specific cell populations. Evaluating their potential to migrate to the intestine was an obvious choice, said Almeida-Porada, because dysfunctional blood vessels are a hallmark of IBD. Not only are circulating levels of vessel-forming cells reduced in patients with IBD, but a key factor in IBD progression is the development of abnormal or immature blood vessels, which leads to chronic inflammation.

The cells were injected into fetal sheep at 59 to 65 days gestation. About 11 weeks later, intestinal tissue was analyzed to detect the presence of the human cells. The researchers found that the human cells had migrated to the intestine and contributed significantly to the cell population there.

"This study shows that the cells can migrate to and survive in a healthy intestine and have the potential to support vascular health," said Almeida-Porada. "Our next step will be to determine whether the cells can survive in the 'war' environment of an inflamed intestine."

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Research suggests promise of cell therapy for bowel disease