Category Archives: Stem Cell Videos

Researchers report that stem cells have reversed bladder leakage in mice, and that the discovery could pave the way for new treatments against urinary incontinence.

The study, conducted at Kyungpook National University in South Korea, found that weakened pelvic-floor muscles in mice were repaired with stem cells made from amniotic fluid. The stem cells also kept the condition from recurring, even though the cells disappeared after 14 days in the body.

Urinary incontinence will affect one out of every three women after age 40. Although men may also have the condition, the frequency is much lower. Treatments for urinary incontinence include surgery, lifestyle changes like weight loss, and exercises to strengthen pelvic muscles.

Previously, stem cell therapy has been suggested as a possibility for treating urinary incontinence, but the only way to gather the cells was through invasive procedures. Collecting stem cells from amniotic fluid is easier during a routine procedure of amniocentesis.

"These stem cells ... have the ability to become muscle cells when grown under the right conditions," study leaders James Yoo and Tae Gyun Kwon said in a statement.

Testing on people, though, is needed to back up the researchers findings.

The study was published in the journal BMC Medicine.

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Stem Cells Could Reverse Incontinence

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Aug.21, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Sutter Neuroscience Institute, a recognized Center of Excellence, and CBR (Cord Blood Registry), the world's largest stem cell bank, are launching the first FDA-approved clinical trial to assess the use of a child's own cord blood stem cells to treat select patients with autism. This first-of-its-kind placebo controlled study will evaluate the ability of an infusion of cord blood stem cells to help improve language and behavior. The study is in conjunction with the Sutter Institute for Medical Research.

To view the multimedia assets associated with this release, please visit: http://www.multivu.com/mnr/57707-cord-blood-registry-stem-cell-trials-child-autism

(Photo:http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120821/MM59477)

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, autism spectrum disorders impact one in 88 children in the U.S., and one in 54 boys.1 The condition is thought to have multiple risk factors including genetic, environmental and immunological components.

"This is the start of a new age of research in stem cell therapies for chronic diseases such as autism, and a natural step to determine whether patients receive some benefit from an infusion of their own cord blood stem cells," said Michael Chez, M.D., director of Pediatric Neurology with the Sutter Neuroscience and principal study investigator. "I will focus on a select portion of children diagnosed with autism who have no obvious cause for the condition, such as known genetic syndromes or brain injury."

The study will enroll 30 children between the ages of two and seven, with a diagnosis of autism who meet the inclusion criteria for the study. Enrolled participants will receive two infusionsone of the child's own cord blood stem cells and one of a placeboover the course of 13 months. Both the participants and the lead investigators will be blinded from knowing the content of each infusion. To ensure the highest quality and consistency in cord blood stem cell processing, storage and release for infusion, CBR is the only family stem cell bank providing units from clients for the study.

For information on study, visit http://www.cordblood.com/autism.

Study Rationale

A newborn's umbilical cord blood contains a unique population of stem cells that have been used for more than 20 years in medical practice to treat certain cancers, blood diseases and immune disorders. When patients undergo a stem cell transplant for these conditions, the stem cells effectively rebuild the blood and immune systems.

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Autism and Cord Blood Stem Cells: FDA Gives Green Light for Groundbreaking Clinical Trial

By Ryan Flinn - 2012-08-21T04:01:00Z

Researchers are recruiting autistic children for a study that will test whether injecting stem cells banked from their umbilical cords can lessen symptoms and provide insights into the nature of the disorder.

While stem cells have been promoted, and sold, as a treatment for autism, few clinical trials have been conducted to see whether theyre effective. The study, which begins enrolling patients today, is the first of its kind approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to assess the use of stem cells as a potential autism therapy, said Michael Chez, director of pediatric neurology at Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento, California, and the principal investigator.

About 1 in 88 children in the U.S. are diagnosed with an autism-related condition. The disorder hurts brain development and is linked to poor social interaction and communication skills, repeated body movements, and unusual attachments to objects.

With this study well be able to answer in a firm way that this is truly an observed effect, or we didnt get an observed effect, Chez said in a phone interview.

Thirty children with autism, ages 2 to 7, will be divided in two groups, with one getting the stem cell injection and the other receiving a placebo shot. After six months, the groups will switch. Patients will be monitored for improvement in language as well as irritability and other autism rating scales.

Ricardo Dolmetsch, a neurobiologist at Stanford University in California whose laboratory is studying autism, said he doesnt think the trial will yield much in usable results, though hes glad the idea of using stem cells is being testing.

I commend them for having the guts to actually do it, given that there are all kinds of people out there trying to sell it, he said. On the other hand I dont think its big enough to provide an answer.

Chez theorizes that autism, which has no known cause or cure, may be spurred on by damaged nerve cells. Stem cells, the building blocks of life that can grow into any type of tissue in the body, could repair the damage or create new cells, he said. Such a mechanism would yield results in six to 12 months, the time it takes to create new cells.

Another possibility may be that autism is related to a signaling issue, where cells in the body arent connecting properly. Stem cells may help repair that problem, he said, and would be evident if results are seen within weeks of the injection. A third and more exploratory possibility is the disorder is related to inflammation, an immune system response.

Continued here:
Autism Stem-Cell Therapy to Be Tested in Kids in Trials

Newswise ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- How do stem cells preserve their ability to become any type of cell in the body? And how do they decide to give up that magical state and start specializing?

If researchers could answer these questions, our ability to harness stem cells to treat disease could explode. Now, a University of Michigan Medical School team has published a key discovery that could help that goal become reality.

In the current issue of the prestigious journal Cell Stem Cell, researcher Yali Dou, Ph.D., and her team show the crucial role of a protein called Mof in preserving the stem-ness of stem cells, and priming them to become specialized cells in mice.

Their results show that Mof plays a key role in the epigenetics of stem cells -- that is, helping stem cells read and use their DNA. One of the key questions in stem cell research is what keeps stem cells in a kind of eternal youth, and then allows them to start growing up to be a specific type of tissue.

Dou, an associate professor of pathology and biological chemistry, has studied Mof for several years, puzzling over the intricacies of its role in stem cell biology.

She and her team have zeroed in on the factors that add temporary tags to DNA when its coiled around tiny spools called histones. In order to read their DNA, cells have to unwind it a bit from those spools, allowing the gene-reading mechanisms to get access to the genetic code and transcribe it. The temporary tags added by Mof act as tiny beacons, guiding the reader mechanism to the right place.

Simply put, Mof regulates the core transcription mechanism without it you cant be a stem cell, says Dou. There are many such proteins, called histone acetyltransferases, in cells but only MOF is important in undifferentiated cells.

Dou and her team also have published on another protein involved in DNA transcription, called WDR5, that places tags that are important during transcription. But Mof appears to control the process that actually allows cells to determine which genes it wants to read a crucial function for stem-ness. Without Mof, embryonic stem cells lost their self-renewal capability and started to differentiate, she explains.

The new findings may have particular importance for work on induced pluripotent stem cells the kind of stem cells that dont come from an embryo, but are made from adult tissue.

IPCS research holds great promise for disease treatment because it could allow a patient to be treated with stem cells made from their own tissue. But the current way of making IPSCs from tissue involves a process that uses a cancer-causing gene a step that might give doctors and patients pause.

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Stem Cells Can Become Anything - but Not Without This Protein

Two men in landmark heart stem cell study tell their stories.

Jim Dearing of Louisville, Ky., one of the first men in the world to receive heart stem cells, might have helped start a medical revolution that could lead to a cure for heart failure.

Three years after getting the experimental stem cell procedure, following two heart attacks and heart failure, Dearings heart is working normally.

2012 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved.

The difference is clear and dramatic -- and it's lasting, according to findings now being made public for the first time.

Dearing first showed "completely normal heart function" on an echocardiogram done in 2011, says Roberto Bolli, MD, who is leading the stem cell trial at the University of Louisville. Those results have not been published before.

That was still true in July 2012, when Dearing again showed normal heart function on another echocardiogram.

Based on those tests, Bolli says, "Anyone who looks at his heart now would not imagine that this patient was in heart failure, that he had a heart attack, that he was in the hospital, that he had surgery, and everything else."

It's not just Dearing who has benefited. His friend, Mike Jones, who had even more severe heart damage, also got the stem cell procedure in 2009. Since then, scarred regions of his heart have shrunk. His heart now appears leaner and stronger than it was before.

"What's striking and exciting is that we're seeing what appears to be a long-lasting improvement in function," Bolli says. If larger studies confirm the findings, "potentially, we have a cure for heart failure because we have something that for the first time can actually regenerate dead tissue."

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Stem Cell Research: Heart Stem Cells May Help Heal Hearts After Heart Attack

ScienceDaily (Aug. 17, 2012) Stress urinary incontinence (SUI) can occur due to sneezing, coughing, exercising or even laughing and happens because the pelvic floor muscles are too weak causing leakage when the bladder is put under pressure. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine shows that a new technique, using stem cells isolated from amniotic fluid, can regenerate damaged urethral sphincter muscles and prevent pressure incontinence in mice.

Although SUI is more common during and after pregnancy, and after the age of 40, one in three women will experience it at some point in their lives. Men can also be affected, especially after prostate surgery. SUI is treatable and in many cases losing weight, reducing caffeine intake, pelvic floor exercises, and bladder training can have very beneficial effects. If this does not work more invasive treatments are necessary, however there can be serious side effects associated with surgery.

Using stem cells to regenerate the damaged or weak muscles has been proposed as an alternative to surgery. But most protocols for harvesting stem cells also require invasive procedures, and often produce very low numbers of viable cells. In contrast amniotic stem cells can be collected easily, and have very low immunogenicity, reducing chances of rejection. Researchers from Kyungpook National University, Korea, investigated the ability of stem cells isolated from human amniotic fluid obtained during routine amniocentesis to regenerate damaged urethral sphincter muscles in mice.

James Yoo and Tae Gyun Kwon, who led this research, explained, "These stem cells are mesenchymal and consequently have the ability to become muscle cells when grown under the right conditions. We found that the stem cells were able to survive for seven days inside the mice but by 14 days they had all disappeared. Nevertheless they were able to induce regeneration of the mouse's own urethral sphincter muscle."

Quite how stem cells are able to retrain the body's own cells is still not fully understood. Not only was muscle regenerated, but this muscle had proper connections to nerves, and was able to improve the pressure required in the bladder before incontinence begins and stops. Humans are already being treated with stem cell therapy for diseases, including diabetes, and since Since amniotic stem cells appeared to cause no immune response or tumour formation, these cells may provide an avenue for future stem cell therapy for humans.

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Saving a penny: Stem cell therapy shows promise in repairing stress urinary incontinence

The Sutter Neuroscience Institute in Sacramento plans to launch groundbreaking research today to discover whether infusing umbilical cord stem cells into the bloodstreams of autistic children will help them overcome debilitating characteristics of the condition.

The clinical trial is the first of its kind to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said Dr. Michael Chez, the principal investigator and Sutter's director of pediatric neurology.

One of the world's foremost autism experts at the institute, which is recognized for its practice of pediatric neuroscience, Chez said the research may help identify a valuable new tool in the struggle against autism spectrum disorders, which now affect about one in 88 children nationwide, and one in 54 boys.

"This is an exciting trial, because it's exposing us to the new frontier of stem cells and whether they may have some positive effect on this disease," Chez said. "This is the start of a new age of research in stem cell therapies for chronic diseases such as autism."

Recent research has revealed robust new uses for stem cells. Stem cells, for example, can now be developed from heart muscle in cardiac patients and injected back into the heart for improved functioning. Doctors are also having success using stem cells to treat leukemia and bone marrow diseases.

Autism is the leading cause of delayed development in children, typically surfacing before 3 years of age. The condition is characterized by impaired communication, repetitive thoughts and behavior and difficulty in socialization.

The likelihood of a child's being given a diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder increased more than 20 percent from 2006 to 2008, according to a report this year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Locally, more than 3,830 students in the four-county Sacramento region were counted as autistic in December 2011, up 13 percent from the previous year, according to state data.

The Sutter clinical trial follows promising research in using cord blood stem cells to help children with cerebral palsy, a brain disorder that shares some characteristics with autism, to improve motor function.

Chez became the point man for developing protocols for the clinical trial over a year ago, after being contacted by Cord Blood Registry, the world's largest cord blood bank. The Bay Area company has collected and frozen 400,000 samples of umbilical cord blood for individuals and families.

The umbilical cord that links a mother's placenta to her fetus is imbued with blood stem cells. Since the 1990s, parents increasingly have opted to have their babies' umbilical cords frozen in storage as a sort of insurance against future disease. The trend now extends to about 5 percent of parents.

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Sutter Neuroscience Institute launching trial of cord blood stem cells in autistic children

CHAPEL HILL Kathy DeClue loves her youngest brother Don Hammed for many reasons. These days, Dons selflessness is at the top of her list.

Don donated the stem cells I received during my transplant, said Kathy, 57, of Trinity, in Randolph County. It was a favor I never thought Id have to ask for. But I would have done the same for him if he needed me to.

Kathy needed the stem cell transplant to treat chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a cancer of the blood cells. For some CLL patients, the disease progresses slowly and they may never need treatment. For others, like Kathy, the disease was on fast-forward and required aggressive medical attention.

From the start, we knew that the CLL was behaving like a high-risk disease and was resistant to just about all the therapies we have, said James M. Coghill, MD, assistant professor of hematology and oncology at the UNC School of Medicine, a member of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and the leader of Kathys health care team.

The stem cell transplant on April 25 was the best option for trying to get her disease under control, and Kathy had the luxury of three siblings who were a perfect match to donate stem cells. Shes had a supportive family every step of the way. Im sure they would be willing to donate bone marrow again if she needed it.

Besides Don, 46, of Kernersville, N.C., brother Butch Hammed, 56, and sister Rose Tucker, 60, both of Roanoke, Va., were perfect matches. Having multiple matches is unusual as most patients, at best, have a one-in-four chance of getting a perfect match, Dr. Coghill said.

Don got the nod because he was young, healthy and had never been pregnant, Dr. Coghill said. Generally, we try to go with males as donors because female donors who have been pregnant develop antibodies that can increase the chances of graft vs. host disease or rejection.

Rose, the mother of three children, jumped, cried and screamed when she found out she was a perfect match for her sister and her best friend.

I wanted to be a match and her donor so bad, and I was really disappointed when they went with Don, Rose said. They told me Id have enough to do as her caregiver, and as it turned out, I did.

Rose, who was laid off from her child day care job last year, came to Chapel Hill and tended to Kathys every need during the preparations for the transplant and the 100 days post-transplant that Kathy was required to stay at SECU Family House.

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Family ties: Trinity woman with leukemia receives stem cells from brother

COULD we stem the tide of ageing by delaying the deterioration of stem cells? A new compound that appears to do just that could help us find ways to protect our organs from age-related wear and tear, experiments in mice suggest.

As we age, so do our mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs): their numbers in our bone marrow decline, and those that are left lose the ability to differentiate into the distinct cell types - such as bone, cartilage, fat and possibly muscle cells - that help in the healing process.

"We think this ageing of stem cells may be linked to the onset of some age-related disorders, such as osteoporosis," says Ilaria Bellantuono at the University of Sheffield in the UK.

Earlier research in mice had suggested that the prion protein expressed by MSCs might play a role in holding back stem cell ageing. Mice lacking the prion protein were less able to regenerate blood cells. The study provided more evidence that correctly folded prions serve a useful purpose in the body, despite the role that misfolded prions play in BSE and vCJD.

Bellantuono and her colleagues have now found that the prion protein performs a similar function in humans - older MSCs from human bone marrow expressed less of the protein than younger ones.

In a bid to find a compound that might slow MSC ageing, the team tested numerous molecules known to target prion proteins on dishes of human stem cells. One molecule emerged as a potential candidate - stem cells treated with it produced 300 times the number of cells over 250 days than untreated stem cells. The treated cells kept on dividing for longer.

The team then injected treated cells into the thigh bones of mice, and three days later found that they had produced three times as many new cells as they would normally produce. After five weeks, there were 10 times as many cells.

The new cells appeared to be of higher quality, too, and readily differentiated into bone and fat cells, as well as those that support the tissue and blood vessels.

Bellantuono's team think the molecule works by helping the prions protect the stem cells from the DNA damage associated with normal ageing. When they exposed both treated and untreated cells to hydrogen peroxide - a compound known to cause DNA damage - they found that the treated cells were protected from damage (Stem Cells, DOI: 10.1002/stem.1065).

"You can delay the loss of stem cells' function by manipulating the prion protein," says Bellantuono, who presented the findings at the Aging Online Symposium last month. "In the long term, you may go a long way to maintaining tissue health in [old] age."

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Protecting prion protein keeps stem cells young

Researchers at Kings College London have developed the first artificial functioning blood vessel outside of the body, according to a release from the college. The vessels are made from reprogrammed stem cells from human skin. The team also saw the cells develop into a blood vessel inside the body for the first time.

The hope is that this new technique will eventually lead to a treatment for patients with heart disease. The plan is that the reprogrammed cells would be injected into a leg or even directly into the heart to restore blood flow. Another possibility would be to graft one of the artificially developed vessels into the body as a replacement for blocked or damaged vessels. The research team also believes the newly created vessels could be used to prevent leg amputation in diabetic patients with poor circulation.

The study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reports that the reprogrammed vascular cells have no risk turning into tumors.

The release quotes Professor Qingbo Xu of the British Heart Foundation as saying, "This is very exciting research . . . If we can develop this approach as personalized treatments for patients with the condition, it will be a significant step forward."

The researchers cautioned that this is an early study and that more research needs to be done regarding how this approach will works in patients, but Dr Hlne Wilson, Research Advisor at the British Heart Foundation, said: "The discovery could help lead towards future therapies to repair hearts after they are damaged by a heart attack. As well as playing a part in a possible future regenerative treatment, these cells might also be used in drug screening to find new treatments to tackle inherited diseases."

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Stem Cells as Blood Vessels=Heart Tx?